Blurry
by The One Eyed Witch
Summary: Sara Sidle goes missing from a crime scene, leaving behind nothing but a pool of blood. Angst Galore.
1. Gil Grissom

**Disclaimer:** The only thing I have is my imagination. Someone else owns CSI.

**Summary:** Sara Sidle goes missing at a crime scene, leaving behind nothing but a pool of blood. Angst gallore.

Two months had passed. Eight and a half weeks. Sixty one days. One thousand, four hundred and sixty four hours. Eighty seven thousand, eight hundred and forty minutes. Eternity and barely a blink of an eye at the same time. For Gil Grissom this two month anniversary could only be described as hell.

On this day, two months, eight and a half weeks, Sixty one days, one thousand, four hundred and sixty four hours, or eighty seven thousand, eight hundred and forty minutes ago, Sara Sidle had vanished.

That day had not started out as hell. At midnight, when the graveyard shift had come to work, the sky had been clear, and there were even some stars visible, despite the city lights. There had been a breeze that had brought fresh air down from the mountains, and made the smog filled city air seem almost pleasant. And Gil Grissom had been happily occupied with perfecting the speech that he was going to present at the entomology conference in LA.

It had been a very slow night, and later Grissom would tell himself that this should have tipped him off to the chaos that had been about to follow. Warrick and Catherine had been processing evidence for a case that they had been working on. The rest of the CSIs had been filling out the paperwork that should have been completed weeks ago. But this was the first week of relative quite that the Lab had experienced in months, so not even Conrad Ecklie, had given them too much trouble over incomplete paperwork.

Around one A.M. a call from Detective Jim Brass came in. There had been a robbery at a jewelry store. It wasn't a particularly expensive jewelry store and not much was taken, so Gil had needed to send only one person. He had however wanted give Greg some hand-on experience. And if Grissom was perfectly honest with himself, he could admit that he had also wanted to test the young man, to see how far along Greg had come.

So he had sent three CSIs to Brass. He had put Greg in charge, and let Sara and Nick see how he would hold up on the scene without Gil around to intimidate him. At the time he had felt pretty proud of himself for thinking of a way to turn a slow day into a controlled, productive, and very informative experiment.

"Greg, Sara, Nick. Grab your gear. There is a robbery on Easton." Oh, how easy those words had been to say. Twelve words. They had changed everything. Later Grissom would wonder why they hadn't gotten stuck in his throat. Why hadn't alarm bells started ringing in his head?

"I want Greg to take the lead on this one." And no one had said anything. He got a few raised eyebrows, but he had hired them because they were all very intelligent people. It only took them a few seconds to work out why he was sending three people to a low-profile robbery and putting the most junior member in charge.

When they were leaving he had simply nodded at them. Later he would stay awake at nights and wonder why he hadn't said anything awe inspiring. Something that Sara would remember him by. Or maybe he should have just told her to be careful. Or wished her luck. He wondered if it would have made a difference.

He wasn't there for what happened later. But he could piece together a timeline from the different accounts. They had arrived on scene at approximately one thirty. Greeted Brass, who also had only raised an eyebrow at Greg taking the lead on the case. The Detective gave them the basic facts: Small jewelry store owned by a Marsha Littlefield; the robber, or robbers, had broken the front window of the store shortly before midnight; triggered the alarm; then he, or she, or they, like a proverbial bull in a china shop, forced their way inside, smashed a couple of display cases, grabbed some of the more expensive looking jewelry, and then bailed before the police responded to the alarm. No one saw anything.

After making sure that the area was secure, Brass left a couple of police officers at the scene and then left to sort through a pile up on the highway.

Greg Sanders did the initial walk through. They noted that the shop was small, consisting only of three rooms: the display room, the backroom which also served as a break room for the two employees, and the office which had a secure lock on the door, and housed a heavy-duty safe where the cash, and some of the more expensive jewelry were kept overnight.

The three also quickly noted that one of the robbers had managed to cut himself, or herself, on the broken glass, and left behind a blood trail. There had been blood in the break room, but there was no sign that anyone had even tried to get into the office. Sara suggested that the robber had probably been hoping for easy pickings, and discovering that it wouldn't be that easy, deceided to resign himself to the things in the display room.

Greg had then split them up. He himself had collected evidence in the display room. Nick had been asked to check around the perimeter. And Sara had gotten the backroom.

It should have been safe. The area had been cleared by Brass and his men. There were only two way in and out of the shop: the front door which had been guarded by an armed Officer, and the backdoor, which had been securely locked. It was only later that they would learn that Marsha Littlefield had had her purse stolen earlier that week, that one of the items in Marsha's purse had been the backdoor key, and that the locksmith was only coming to replace the lock the next day. But they learned that too late to help Sara.

Less then fifteen minutes after Sara had entered the break room, Greg remembered her calling out: "Hang on, I think there is something at the back of this door." She had then closed the door separating the display room from the back room; presumably in order to get a good look at fore mentioned 'something'.

And then everything had gone to hell. Greg remembered the sound of three gunshots. Something hit the door from the break room side. If there was any noise coming from the backroom after that, no one heard it in the commotion that followed. The officer on scene had rushed in, and tried to get into the backroom, only to find the door locked. While the Officer tried to talk whoever was inside into opening the door, Greg managed to pull himself together enough to radio Dispatch and request backup. Nick had heard something and had come running from a block away.

By the time backup had arrived the break room had been empty, and the previously locked back door was wide open. Tread marks in the alley behind the shop indicated that someone had sped out of the alley. Despite Greg's fears they did not find Sara's dead body in the backroom. They did however find a lot of blood that hadn't been there before. They could not, however, find Sara.

What started out as a one CSI case, became the sole priority of the lab. Everyone had been put to work. Bobby from Ballistics had analyzed the one bullet that had been found imbedded into the wall of the break room. Archie and Warrick watched every traffic camera in the vicinity for suspicious looking vehicles. Nick and Catharine analyzed the tread marks. Amy from DNA had rushed the unknown blood sample from the store, only to find that it belonged to a male but she couldn't tell them any more than that, since the DNA was useless unless they had something to compare it to. Greg and Grissom had searched the surrounding neighborhood for clues. Ecklie looked for people to blame.

And then Doc Robinson had sadly informed them that with the amount of Sara's blood that had been present at the crime scene, Sara was most likely dead, unless she was either extremely lucky or had gotten medical help immediately. Preferably both.

It hadn't felt real. The couple of days following the shooting Grissom only remembered as a blur of movement, panic, fear, and guilt.

And despite how much manpower they had, Sara's case kept hitting dead end, after dead end. They couldn't figure out who committed the original robbery. And they couldn't figure out who had attacked Sara. Had the robbers come back to the crime scene? Had someone purposefully staged the robbery and had been waiting to kill Sara? Or was Marsha just cursed and two different groups had tried to rob her store in one night?

And now two months later they were no closer to finding Sara than they had been two hours after she had disappeared. Ecklie had started hinting that he needed to hire another CSI to take Sara's place, but Gil had pretended to be dense, and ignored the hints. People at the lab started talking about holding a memorial service. But they never dared talk in the presence of the Graveyard Shift CSIs.

Grissom was not yet ready to let her go yet. He still referred to that day as the day Sara Sidle had vanished, not the as day she had been killed.

_A.N.: If you love it--review, if you like it--review, if you don't like it--review, if you hate it--review (constructively, please). If you have no opinion-review anyway. Please?_


	2. Terry McNair

**Disclaimer:** _Jim Brass, Sara Sidle, Catherine Willows, Warrick Brown, and the rest of the CSI characters are not mine. I did however make up Terry._

_**A.N.** Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. It really made my day. I would also like to note that I have never been to Vegas, and I therefore made up the street names and locations. So I apologize in advance for my complete butchering of Las Vegas geography._

2.

Terry McNair loved driving at night. During the day he had to worry about traffic, the glare of the sun, and the stupid pedestrians. At night, however everything was quite and peaceful, and the road was usually completely empty. This road he found especially relaxing. For three years now he made the four hour trip between his dorm and his parent's house almost weekly, so he knew this route like the back of his hand. Driving this way in the daytime was stressful, and he preferred to miss some sleep and make the trip at night.

Tonight he had ended up leaving later than usual. At one in the morning he was still in the Southern part of Vegas. Making a mental note to place a call to his mom's cell the next time he stopped at a Rest Area, Terry maneuvered the car into the highway that would take him almost directly to his home town in Colorado. His mom often woke up around four in the morning to make sure that he made it home okay, but tonight he didn't think he'd make it home till at least five A.M., and he didn't want Mom to worry.

The highway was absolutely empty. He turned up the radio a little louder, and hummed along to the music, letting the tension of the last week drain out of him. His girlfriend in high school went to a Yoga class every Friday evening. At the time he couldn't figure out why she couldn't pick a class at a different time to go to, so that they could do something fun on Fridays. But she kept insisting that the class helped her release the tension of the work week, and helped her enjoy her weekend more. Terry didn't do Yoga, but he now understood his ex a lot more than he used to.

And then up ahead he saw something white move in the bushes. He slowed down. There were a few deer in this area, and he wasn't about to wreck his car, because some herbivore had a death wish.

Then he noticed that whatever was up ahead was not very deer shaped, and he slowed down practically to a crawl to get a better look at what ever 'it' was.

When 'it' came into the range of his Toyota's headlights, Terry let out a strangled scream. He had never before believed in monsters or ghosts, but that was exactly what that thing by the road looked like. His first instinct was to press down on the gas pedal, and put as much distance between it and himself as possible.

However, before he had a chance to do that, the logical, pre-med part of his mind kicked in and overrode the more primal instincts. That part of him recognized that the man shaped thing by the road, was indeed human being, a badly injured and bloody human being, but a human being none-the-less.

His parents had always liked to say that he was a very kind child. His girlfriends tossed around the words cute and sweet. His roommate, James, told him he was an idiot. At that exact moment Terry thought James knew him best, because despite everything that the logical part of his mind was yelling at him, Terry found himself stopping the car, getting out of it, and slowly moving towards the person.

"Hey" Terry called out, and then stopped. The question at the tip of his tongue, 'are you okay' was actually ridiculously stupid. You didn't need to be a doctor to be able to see that the person illuminated by the headlights was not okay. But he didn't know what else to say either, so he just slowly moved towards the person, keeping his hands in plain sight to show that he wasn't going to hurt them.

As he got closer, he realized that it was a woman standing in front of him. Her face was swollen with bruises; her hair looked like it had been cut with garden shears by a six year old, who managed to get some skin off her skull as well. Terry couldn't even tell what color her clothes were, because of all the blood that covered them.

"Miss" he called out again. This time the woman flinched at the sound of his voice. So Terry lowered his voice, made his tone as gentle as possible and tried again. "Miss, it okay I'm not gonna hurt you."

The woman stared at him for what felt like an eternity, and then, apparently deciding that he was being honest, she slowly began to move towards him. Terry stayed in place not wanting to scare her. He did however reach into the pocket of his hoodie to get his cell. She needed medical attention, and she needed it soon. But just as he was flipping open the phone, he noticed that the woman was looking fearfully back at the desert from which she had just emerged.

"What is it?" he asked her gently. Her eyes snapped away from the desert and she looked at him, before her lips started moving and he heard her speaking. At first, Terry couldn't tell what she was saying: he guessed that her mouth sustained enough damage to make it difficult for her to talk. So he moved closer trying to understand what she was telling him.

It hit him suddenly. She was repeating "Please don't let him get me. Please don't let him get me. Please don't let him get me" over and over again.

It occurred to Terry then, that it was unlikely that the woman had done all of that damage to herself. And they were still standing on the side of an empty road, and whoever had done this to her, was probably still out there. His parents had always drilled into his head that he should never pick up strangers at the road side and let them into his car, but Terry figured that standing on an empty road with a half dead woman and an unknown man out there somewhere was an even stupider thing to do.

So as gently, and as quickly, as he could, he ushered the woman towards his car.

"It's okay; I'm not going to let him get you" he tried to reassure her. "We'll get you to a hospital, and we'll call the police and everything will be fine."

It took forever to get the woman to the car. She walked slowly, and was in obvious pain, but whenever Terry got too close to her she would flinch away from him. Terry, however, was painfully aware that they were out in the open, and were probably very easy targets for whoever was out there. Every sound made his heart beat faster, and it took every ounce of his self control, not to sprint back to his car and just leave the woman there. He considered briefly just picking her up and carrying her to his car, but he decided that that course of action would require him too waste to much precious time trying to calm her down , and that he would be better off simply walking with her.

After an eternity they made it to his car. He opened one of the doors for her, and she collapsed into the backseat. Terry ran around the car, and slid into the driver's seat.

He started the car and hit the accelerator. He wanted to be as far away from that place, and the woman's attacker as he could. As he was Accelerating, he looked back in the rearview mirror and he could have sworn there was someone standing on the road, in the place that they had just left. In his mind the mysterious 'him' looked like Hannibal Lecter. It took him a few minutes to calm down, at which point he realized that his earlier idea of getting the woman to a hospital was still the best course of action. He could call the police from the hospital.

The closest hospital that he could remember was Mercy Memorial. He turned off the highway on the next exit and sped towards it. He ran a few red lights, and broke more than a couple of speed limits, but he figured that this was enough of an emergency to justify bending a few rules. Fortunately, he was approaching Mercy form the less touristy part of town, and there was no one on the streets at one in the morning.

A month ago, James had a splinter that got infected. His finger had swelled, and turned an ugly shade of red, and Terry had to take him to the hospital. At the time Terry had been pissed that he had to waste his time sitting around in the waiting room, waiting for a doctor to see James. Now he was incredibly thankful to James: that day, a month ago familiarized him with the roads around Mercy Memorial, and made the hospital easy to find.

He pulled in to the lot in front of the emergency room, stopped the car by the curb, and turned around to see the woman in the backseat. Apart from occasionally muttering "please don't let him get me", she had remained silent for the duration of the trip. Now she was lying across the backseat, unmoving, and Terry felt a moment of panic. He reached back and placed his fingers at her neck trying to find a pulse. He relaxed marginally when he felt a tiny fluttering against his fingertips. Then he tensed up again, when he realized that she was so out of it, that she hadn't even flinched at his touch. He got out of the car and went towards the back seat. It took a few minutes for him to maneuver himself into a position where he could pick her up without hurting her. Once she was securely in his arms he ran as fast as he could towards the doors of the emergency room.

As he rushed through the automatic doors, he whimsically considered yelling 'I need a doctor' like they did in the movies, but decided against it. With the amount of blood on the woman, they were noticed immediately, and a young man dressed in scrubs pushed one of those rolling carts towards him. A woman rushed over, and she and the man took the injured woman out of his hands. Someone asked him if he knew what was wrong with her, but Terry had no idea what kind of injuries she had. Then she was being wheeled away through a set of doors, and another woman was trying to find his injuries.

"I'm not hurt" he told her. "I don't need a doctor".

She looked at him skeptically, and Terry realized that his hoodie was covered in blood. "It's not mine" he explained "Its all hers."

"Then why don't you tell me what happened." The doctor, Dr. Ericsson judging by her nametag, asked, leading him over to a small examination room.

"I found her." Terry took a deep breath trying to calm himself down. "On the highway. I was driving. She was by the side of the road. I stopped the car." She was in a hospital now they were going to take care of her. "I thought she was a ghost at first. You know. Like Bloody Mary." He laughed. It wasn't really funny. "I was going to call an ambulance." He also wanted to call the police. "I need to make a call. The police. There was a man. I need to call the cops..."

"Calm down." Dr. Ericsson soothed him. "I'll make the call for you. Now, I need to know about the man: was he hurt too?"

"No." he shook his head. Then he corrected himself "I don't know. I never saw him. Well I thought I saw him, but I think that I just imagined him." Oh man. He sounded crazy. He needed to explain what happened rationally, before Dr. Ericsson locked him up in the psych ward. "Before I had a chance to call 911, the woman she started talking. She kept repeating 'please don't let him get me' over and over again. It was really creepy. I was afraid of sticking around there till an ambulance got there, so I helped her to my car and got the hell out of Dodge."

Dr. Ericsson seemed to understand. She asked him to wait in the room, while she went to call the police.

Terry had just begun calming down, when a short, though very intimidating man walked into the room, and introduced himself as Detective Jim Brass. Detective Brass wanted Terry to repeat his story. This time around, talking about what happened was much harder, because Detective Brass kept questioning every aspect of the story. Terry had seen enough cop shows to know that the short guy was trying to get him to contradict himself, and Terry absently thought that it was extremely effective.

Fortunately, he seemed to be able to answer all of the questions to Brass's satisfaction, because the detective left shortly afterwards with a barked instruction not to leave the room.

Less than half an hour later, he came back with two more people. One was blonde woman, approximately his Aunt Tracey's age, and one an African American man in his thirties.

They asked Terry to tell him what happened again, but these two were more interested in the details (where exactly did he find the woman, how long were they in his car, etc…). They also wanted Terry's DNA sample, his fingerprints, his clothes and his car. He knew enough about his rights, to know that he could refuse to give them any or all of that, but somehow that seemed petty. They only wanted to figure out what happen to the poor woman. So he let them swab his mouth, and print his fingers. He exchanged his clothes for a pair of scrubs that the hospital offered him. He even handed over his car key.

The hospital let him use one of the phones at the nurses' station, since the blond woman carefully asked him if he minded letting her have his cell phone as well, "Just to rule him out as a suspect" she had said. After everything the cell phone seemed to be a small concession to make, and the woman did promise earnestly that he would get his stuff back as soon as possible. Terry hadn't wanted to be rude by asking when that would be.

James had been pretty pissed off at being woken so late. But he promised to be at the hospital to pick Terry up within an hour. Terry also called his mom, and told her that "something came up. Don't worry, it's nothing big. I'll be home next weekend, and I'll tell you all about it."

While he waited for his ride, Detective Brass handed Terry some paperwork to fill out. Terry couldn't, however, help overhearing part of the conversation going on between the three cops. Most of the conversation didn't make much sense to him and the blond woman disappeared shortly to 'process the vic', whatever that meant. The tall lanky man, left to go 'to the lab', and the short detective directed a couple more questions to the doctors before he went to pick up the papers from Terry.

Before Brass left Terry said to him "Look I know that this probably isn't your job but could you give me a call, just to tell me if she's okay?" The cop gave him a long look and nodded before leaving.

Twenty minutes later James walked into the hospital. He was hung-over and tired and really didn't want to know what happened. James would be curious in the morning, but right now he just wanted to sleep.

Before he went to sleep that night, Terry McNair prayed for the first time in over ten years. He asked God to make sure that the woman would be alright.

_A.N. The more reviews I get the more inspired I become to write. So click that button!_


	3. Amy Lee

**Disclaimer:** _Still not mine._

**A.N.**_ I had a blonde moment: I couldn't remember who was hired as Greg's replacement, so for the purposes of this story we'll pretend it was someone named Amy Lee._

_And thanks for the reviews you guys. They made me feel all warm and glowy inside._

3.

Amy Lee double checked her results. Then she triple checked them. And then she opened the second evidence bag containing the swab with the victim's DNA and ran that through the machine. She triple checked those results as well.

If what the printout in front of her was telling her was true, then that would mean… No! she wasn't going to think that. She probably contaminated her results… with the DNA from a two month old case. Yeah. That made a lot of scene.

But Catharine Willows had been the one who had processed the victim. And there was no way that Catharine would not recognize Sara Sidle. No way in hell.

Amy wanted the Jane Doe lying in the hospital bed to be her co-worker. The Jane Doe was alive. In very bad shape, but alive nonetheless. And in Amy's mind, Alive with lots of injuries had to be better than dead in a ditch somewhere.

And yet, Amy understood that if Sara was dead, and the DNA test was simply a giant mistake, then this false hope might just become the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. After the shoot-out things just hadn't been the same at the lab. Grissom sometimes looked panicked at the thought of sending CSIs out into the field. Nick Stokes had been withdrawn, and short with people: a practically unheard of thing for the Texan. Personally, Amy thought that Nick must have had a then crush on Sara. And Greg Sanders was just a shadow of the man that he used to be. Greg had been the lead on the case, and even though, he had been assured by everyone, and by some people more than once, that what happened to Sara was not his responsibility, he still carried around too much guilt.

Amy, herself had not been particularly close to Sara, but the thought that this Jane Doe was not Sidle, and that Sara might actually be dead in a ditch somewhere, made it difficult to breathe. She couldn't even imagine what the people who were close to Sidle would feel if she dangled hope in front of them, and then took it away.

So Amy did something completely out of character: she lied to Catherine, and told her that the DNA sample had been contaminated. It had actually been surprisingly easy to do.

She had run into Catherine, just as the CSI was leaving the lab.

"Going home for the day?" Small talk, Amy was sure, was the way to get through the conversation.

"Not quite." Catharine responded. She didn't sound suspicious, good. "I want to stop by the hospital on the way home. See if there was any change to the girl's condition." She suddenly looked years older. "I hate working cases like this. When the victim is already dead, I can usually separate myself from it. They're dead, and the only thing I can do for them is find out who did this to them. But with living victims, I always feel like I'm violating their privacy for some really petty reasons like revenge and bureaucracy. The dirty looks the doctors give you, when you're processing their patient doesn't help much either."

Amy noted that Sara… no, not Sara, the Jane Doe must have been in really bad condition, to have disturbed Catharine enough to confide in Amy. They were strictly co-workers and not friends by any stretch of the imagination.

"That was actually what I wanted to talk to you about" now the hard part. "You know the swabs that you got me for DNA analyses?" Amy didn't wait for Catherine to nod just rushed on with her lie: "I got them contaminated, and I was wondering if you could pick up another DNA sample while you were at the hospital."

Catharine regarded her for a few minutes and Amy had to wonder if she could lose her job over this. Contaminated evidence was a very serious problem.

"Did anything else get compromised?" Catharine asked. Amy violently shook her head, no, and resisted the urge to just blurt out the truth. The older woman, bless her soul, apparently realized how painful it was for Amy to talk about this and reassured her: "Happens to the best of us. I'll be back with another sample soon. Probably won't take longer than half an hour. Just remember to fill out the right paperwork for this. Ask Greg, he definitely had to do it more then once." And with that she was gone.

Amy went back to her lab. She tried to work. She really did. But every couple of minutes she would get sidetracked by what the blood sample might reveal. The half hour felt like eternity. Her mind kept going over all of the possibilities: It really was Sara, and she would be fine, or it was Sara, but the doctors wouldn't be able to save her. Or maybe it really was contaminated evidence, and she was getting all worked up over nothing.

Finally, Catherine was there. She dropped off the sample off and went home, not even suspecting how much everything could change from just that one vial of blood.

Her hands were shaking as she loaded up the machine, this time running it against only Sara Sidle's DNA. It seemed to take forever, even thought somewhere in the back of her mind she understood that this was a brand new machine, and it was one of the fastest available.

When she heard the printer start-up, she snatched the paper away before it even hit the tray.

The results hadn't changed. The woman lying in the hospital bed at Mercy, was indeed Sara Sidle. But Amy ran the DNA twice more, just in case.

_A.N. And do the hocky-pocky cause that's what it's all about._

_Sorry, I meant: write a review, cause that's what it's all about_


	4. Warrick Brown

**Disclaimer:**_ I OWN NOTHING. Really. Even the sweater I'm wearing I borrowed from a friend._

_**A.N.:** I'm sorry that this story is developing so slowly. I know people sort of expected more action by now. But on the bright side, I'm having a lot of fun writing these POVs. So bear with me._

_You also need to know that this chapter and Chapter five will both happen in approximately the same time frame, just in different locations and with different characters. So if there are things that aren't really explained in this chapter. Be patient._

_Also thank you for the Reviews. I wasn't going to post this till next week, but then I got all the great reviews, and I couldn't help myself. So for everyone who said that they want the next chapter: hope this helps (Or I'll have to get a crash cart for_ **My Kate**)

_Now after this doozy of an Author's Note, I'll let you get back to reading._

4.

Warrick Brown had seen a lot of things in his time as a CSI. But he knew that this was going to be one of Those cases.

He didn't get a lot of Those cases anymore. When he was younger, and still an inexperienced rookie, every DB he worked on gave him nightmares. Now years later, he had managed to adjust. Dead bodies didn't scare him anymore, and for the most part he could leave his cases at work when he went home. But there was still the occasional job that would haunt him for weeks. And even though Warrick hadn't even finished collecting all of the evidence yet he knew already, that this case wasn't going to stay at work. This one was going to follow him home, and not let him sleep at nights.

When Griss had handed out assignments last night, the entomologist thought he had been handing Warrick and Catherine a simple assault case. A battered woman in the hospital hardly took two experienced CSIs. Everyone had seen the assignment exactly for what it was: an attempt to get people to stop obsessing over Sara's case. Not that Grissom could throw stones. Glass houses and all that. Gil spent every moment of free time looking over that case file trying to find anything that he could have missed the last two and half billion times that he had gone over the file.

At the hospital their simple assault case got a lot more complex. Apparently the woman had come walking out of the desert, and been picked up by a Good Samaritan. Warrick was usually suspicious of Good Samaritans: he didn't meet a lot of them in the course of his job. So he had collected everything that the man, McNair, had touched in the last half-hour, confident that there would be at least something to indicate that he had been the one to beat the poor woman senseless. Catherine had gone up to process the victim, but Warrick had gone back to the lab, secure in the knowledge that they would have the case sealed by morning.

Except everything that Warrick processed supported McNair's story. The blood stain in the back of the car, the blood stained clothes, they all matched perfectly with what Terry had told them. None of the blood splatter even suggested that McNair had laid a hand on the woman. And then Catherine had come in from the hospital. It had only taken Warrick one look at her face, to realize that the 'assault' had been a lot worse that he had originally anticipated.

According to their doctors the Jane Doe was not a victim of domestic abuse, but of strategic torture. The woman's fingertips had been burned preventing anyone from being able to get her fingerprints. Her left arm had been broken in three places. The breaks were spaced evenly. Jane had several stab wounds, all of them painful, but away from major arteries, veins, and organs, to prevent her from dying too soon. She was also covered in bruises from head to toe, and had several scalp wounds, that also seemed to be inflicted with a desire to cause pain. The skin of her wrists and ankles was worn as if though she had been bound by chains or ropes. There were also two gunshot wounds, also away from any major organs, and mostly healed. She was severely mal-nourished and dehydrated. All of the injuries were in different stages of healing indicating that the torture had been spread over a period of time. The doctors said that she was stable for the moment, but with the numerous injuries, some of which had already become infected, they couldn't say when the Jane Doe, or even if, their Jane Doe would be awake. Catharine hadn't volunteered the results of the rape kit, and Warrick didn't ask, fairly certain that he didn't really want to know.

The only good news seemed to be that their Jane Doe had fought back. Underneath her fingernails, Catharine had found a sizeable amount of skin, probably from her attacker. They hoped that eventually they would have something to match the skin sample too.

They submitted a lot of evidence to Amy in the DNA lab, asking her to first of all run the DNA under Jane's fingers against Terry McNair's DNA, and second to run the woman's swab against some of the DNA samples in the missing person's database. It was a long shot, since DNA profiles only recently began being included in the database. It was also possible that their Jane Doe had not been reported missing. But DNA evidence took a while to run, and Amy had already been backlogged, so the tech told them that it might take a while for them to get their results back.

In the meantime Warrick felt a need to do something. So he called Brass and told him that he was going to go out the highway and try to find the place where McNair had claimed to pick up the woman. Brass promised to have a uniformed officer waiting for him by the highway exit. Catharine had wanted to go along, but Warrick shot her down. The older woman had promised Lindsey to chaperone some thing at school, and Warrick knew that searching the highway would probably take most of the day.

By the time he spotted the patrol car waiting for him, the sky was begging to lighten. McNair was able to tell him between which two exits he had found the woman, so he and the cop, Officer Davidson, were going to search the entire stretch of roadside.

Half way through his search area he found splatters of blood. He swabbed it, bagged it, and then backed up a bit. There, about twenty feet away from the blood he found some trademarks. He took a picture and made a mental note to himself to compare the tread with McNair's tires.

Then he and Davidson followed the blood trial into the desert. It was slow going, because the trail wasn't consistent, and sometimes they would lose it and would have to double back. In a couple of places there were heavy indentations and large blood smears, that indicated that she had tripped and fallen. With every step Warrick felt his respect for the Jane Doe grow. Warrick himself was in good shape, but he still found the trek across the desert tiring. He wasn't quite sure how in the world she had managed to cross this distance with her injuries.

Eventually they came across some sort of structure, most of which was partially obscured by sand and invisible from the road. Heck, it was pretty much invisible from everywhere unless you were standing right on top of it. The door was swinging on its hinges, and bloody palm prints on the inside of the door indicated that they had found the right place. Warrick wanted to rush in, but the officer stopped him and told him that he had to secure the scene first. There wasn't much to secure: it was a one room structure without any windows. The only source of light was the cracks in the walls, which let in some sunlight.

Warrick followed the blood trail, from the door and straight into a wall. At first he was confused until he realized that the wall it led to looked cleaner and less dusty than the rest of the room. The color and texture of the wall also differed slightly from the other three walls.

It took a while for Warrick to figure it out, but eventually he found a catch that made part of the 'wall' swing outwards. Behind it was a long and narrow staircase that led down. The officer again insisted on securing it first, so Warrick followed behind him. At the bottom of the stairs was another room. This room would be the first room that would be burned into his memory. There were empty shackles against one of the wall. The walls and floor of this room was covered with blood. There were even some specs on the ceiling. Lying around were a couple of bloody knives that Warrick was willing to bet had been used to torture the woman.

The officer assigned to baby sit him today had been a young kid, probably fresh out of the Academy. Warrick didn't know him that well. What he did know, however, was that the poor kid had never seen anything quite so cruel before. He looked like one of those idealistic youths who firmly believed that people were essentially good. Warrick knew what kids like that looked like, because he too had been one of them early on in his career. But too many years on the job had knocked the idealism right out of him.

But even though he was the one with the experience in human cruelty, Warrick felt very much like the young officer looked. There was the shock, the anger, the fear, and even the betrayal that a member of his species would do something like that to a helpless woman. However unlike Davidson who could only stand there and look sicker by the moment, Warrick channeled all of his feelings into meticulously documenting every inch of the room.

"Go upstairs, kid, and get some fresh air." He ordered the officer. When Davidson looked ready to protest, Warrick added "I don't need another person to trample all over the crime scene while I document it."

That seemed to do it for the kid, and he jogged upstairs taking on three stairs at a time.

Hours had passed. He and Davidson had developed a system: every half-an-hour the kid stood on top of the stairs and asked Warrick how he was doing. When Warrick answered with an "I'm fine" the Officer would leave him alone for another half-an-hour. After the cop called down "Are you alright down there, sir?" for the sixth time, Warrick varied from the routine and yelled up "Almost done here!"

And he was. Everything in this room had been meticulously recorded, everything movable had been tagged and bagged, and even though he knew that a bunch of photos wouldn't help their Jane Doe much, he felt calmer and more relaxed. He did his job, and he did it well, and for now that would have to be enough.

He looked around one more time, before he headed back upstairs. And that was when he noticed it. At first he couldn't understand how he had missed this. Probably the clichéd trees had to do with blocking the forest or something like that. At first he must have been distracted by the blood and instruments of torture. Then he must have been so focused on the details that he didn't immediately spot that the wall opposite of the stairs didn't quite fit in with the rest of the room. Its color and texture were a bit off, in much the same way that the fake wall upstairs hadn't quite fit in with the rest of the shack.

This time it only took a few minutes to find the catch. This 'wall' was obviously of the same design as the 'wall' upstairs. When the 'wall' swung aside Warrick noted two things. First there was another set of stairs leading down into darkness. Second was the smell. The torture room smelled like blood, rust, rot, and infection. But this, whatever this was, smelled like a decomp.

Warrick turned on his flashlight and moved slowly down the stairs, trying not to miss any crucial piece of evidence. It wasn't until he was almost at the bottom of the stairs that he finally lifted his flashlight and looked up. What he saw would stay with him for a very long time.

Suspended from the ceiling were at least a dozen corpses in various stages of decomposition.

Warrick wasn't sure how long he stood there in horror, before the smell finally got to him and he bolted up the stairs. Once he got outside he rushed past the startled officer and ran as far away from the shack as his stomach would let him, before he started dry heaving.

The Officer ran up behind him and started babbling questions about what was wrong. Warrick ignored him and took some deep breaths to calm down. After a few minutes he finally turned to the kid and said:

"There was another trap door, and another room downstairs. This room had multiple DBs." The poor kid looked like he was going to be sick as well. "We need to get back to the shack."

They walked slowly back to that hellhole, while Warrick contemplated whom he needed to call. They would need to call David, the coroner's assistant, and he needed to get Grissom or Ecklie to get some CSIs down here. He was exhausted and he wouldn't be ale to process the scene on his own. He would also need to get a detective out here. This was now a homicide investigation. He reached down into his vest pocket and fished out his cell phone. He tried to dial Grissom's number only to realize that he couldn't get a connection from this area. He asked the officer to wait by the shack while he walked towards the road.

He could see the road by the time he managed to get a call through to Grissom's office phone.

"What?!?" snapped an irritated voice at the end of the line. Not Grissom's voice. Warrick was thrown for a second, and wondered if he misdialed. But that should have been impossible. He had Grissom's office on speed dial.

"I'm sorry" Warrick said, still trying to figure out who dared to answer his boss's phone "I'm trying to reach Gil Grissom."

"Brown?" the voice, which Warrick belatedly realized as Conrad Ecklie's, questioned.

"Yes, sir." Rick didn't like the man, but Ecklie did technically sing his paycheck.

"Where have you been?" Ecklie's voice had a far too high pitch. "We have been trying to reach you."

"Working a case. No service out here." The CSI snapped. Oh yeah. He and Ecklie were just not destined to be Bosom buddies.

"Well you need to get back here. There has been a development in your case." Ecklie's voice suddenly became almost gentle. Warrick looked up at the sky. Nope. No flying pigs there. Must be a bad connection that was messing with Ecklie's voice.

"That's why I'm calling." Ecklie probably wouldn't take to well to his request to put Grissom on the phone. He'd have to ask for back up now. "I traced a blood trail from the road, where my vic was picked up to a shack that looks like the place where she had been kept. I also found multiple DBs. Looks like my assault case just turned into a homicide investigation. I am going to need a coroner to pick up the bodies, and a couple more people to help me process the scene."

Ecklie remained silent for a few seconds, then: "I'll send a couple of people from Day Shift to process your scene. As soon as they get there, I want you to walk them through, and then come back to the Lab."

"You're taking me off the case?!?" Warrick demanded. Hell no. He did all the legwork and now Ecklie's lap dogs would waltz in and take credit for his hard work? Over his dead body.

There was a commotion at the other end of the phone. "Warrick." Grissom's voice this time. "Warrick. No one is taking you off the case. But we need you to get back to the lab. Day shift can handle the scene." There was something off in Grissom's voice. He sounded like he was going to cry.

And then a cold pit settled in Warrick's stomach. Was somebody dead? Did one of his friends go off tonight and come back in body back? That was the only thing that could really break Grissom. But who? Not Catherine probably. She said she would stick around the lab, until it was time to go to Lindsey's school thing. Greg or Nick then. Warrick wanted to ask who it was, but his voice got stuck.

"I'll be there as soon as I can." He chocked out. No. Wait. Day Shift. Crime Scene. Needed to wait. Hand over the Crime Scene. "I'll wait for the Day shift guys by the road." And he hung up.

He got to the road. He waited for his replacements. He walked them to the shack. He told them what he found. He showed them what he had already documented and what they needed to do. He sprinted back to his car. He drove like a maniac to the Lab.

All of this was done on autopilot. The real Warrick Brown had retreated to the back of his head, where he kept seeing things. Nick lying in another coffin. About to be buried again. This time for ever. Greg looking so utterly wrong and stiff lying in the funeral home, as solemn and un-Greg like music was being played. Greg being buried in a tie and suit that he would never have worn in his life. Oh God. He couldn't do this. Not after Sara.

Warrick got to the Lab. And then he stood outside of it. His feet refused to move. He didn't want to go in. And then he heard someone call "Hey, Warrick" from the parking lot.

He turned around, and was rewarded with the most wonderful sight ever. Nick and Greg. Alive. Nick was laughing and Greg was talking a mile a minute while looking utterly ridiculous in some loud and unprofessional shirt. And Warrick felt his eyes tear up with relief.

When they got close enough Nick must have noticed that something was off, because he asked "Rick, man, are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Warrick just nodded and grinned stupidly at them. And then just because he could, he pulled both men into a bear hug. Nick and Greg awkwardly patted him on the back, but didn't pull away realizing that he needed the comfort. People passing by gave them weird looks, but Warrick didn't care. His two best friends were alive. And he was too relieved give a shit about what anyone thought.

When he finally pulled back the stupid grin was still on his face. But damn if it wasn't good to see the two of them.

"What happened, man?" this from Nick. Greg apparently decided to remain silent for once.

"Nothing. I just thought something bad had happened. I mean Griss, he…" And then Warrick stopped. Because once the relief faded, he began to think logically. Grissom had sound broken on the phone. And Ecklie had sounded gentle. And if it wasn't Nick or Greg, then that left Catherine. Or maybe Brass. "We need to talk to Grissom." He said, already walking towards Gil's office.

"No really man, what happened?" Greg this time, trying to keep up with him. "I mean we get a call from Ecklie telling us to get our hinnies back here. Well he didn't use those words, but you get… Rick! Slow down." But by this time Warrick wasn't really paying attention to Greg or Nick. He was practically sprinting towards the office.

And when he got there he saw Ecklie and Grissom inside, along with Brass and the DNA tech, Anna or Amy or something.

But no Catherine. Oh God. Catharine. She was the one person they could always count on not to do something too stupid. She was the mother hen. And what was gonna happen to Lindsey? Please not Catharine.

"Where's Catharine?" He whispered. Please let her be late. Please let it be traffic. Please don't let her be dead.

"Willows is chaperoning her daughter's field trip" Ecklie spoke up and Warrick felt weak with relief. He managed to get to one of the chairs in Grissom's office before his knees gave out on him. Ecklie either didn't notice or chose to ignore him, because he continued talking: "Grissom and I will talk to her when she gets back. Right now we have to talk about Warrick's and Catharine's case."

"How does this concern us?" Nick spoke up voicing the confusion that showed on both his and Greg's faces.

Ecklie continued as if though he hadn't been interrupted. "Amy ran the vic's DNA through the missing person's database, and we got a match."

He paused. Maybe for dramatic effect. Warrick absently noticed that neither Gil nor Jim looked interested. Griss was watching their reactions carefully. Jim looked shocked and happy. So they must already know.

And then Ecklie said: "The woman lying in the hospital is Sara Sidle."

Not for the first time that day, Warrick Brown's brain ground to a halt. Ecklie continued talking; something about double checking results, and dental records, and blah, blah, blah, but Warrick was too busy dealing with part where Sara was alive.

He felt elated. His team was once again together. His family. Alive. They made it beyond any odds. He wanted to jump up and down. Nick and Greg looked much like he felt.

And then Warrick felt the weight of the camera that was still hanging around his neck. With this camera he had taken pictures of a blood covered room. Of instruments of torture. It had been Sara's blood that had coated the room. It had been on Sara that the knives had been used. And as if though somebody had popped a balloon inside of him, the elation was gone. What remained was fear. And anger. And guilt.

The woman that was lying in the hospital could not be Sara. They may have the same DNA and dental records, but this woman had spent two months in that hellhole. She had been tortured. She was in such bad condition, that even her friend Catharine could not recognize her. Right now the doctors weren't even sure if she was going to make it. And even if she did wake up, Warrick wasn't sure if the part of her that made her Sara Sidle was even still in her, or if it had bled out of her in that room. The human body was capable of extraordinary things; he had seen that in the course of his job. In his years as a CSI, Warrick had learned that the body could bounce back from unbelievable injuries. Unfortunately the human mind wasn't quite that hardy, and Warrick had seen that first hand as well.

And seeing the happiness on Nick's, Jim's and Greg's faces, Warrick Brown wished for ignorance for the first time in his life.

_A.N. Reviews are my anti-drug. So click the button! Please!_


	5. Conrad Ecklie

**Disclaimer**_: I don't own CSI. I probably never will. Sigh._

**A.N.:** _Just so that there is no confusion: remember how Rick spent most of last chapter tracking down and processing the shack in the desert? So this chapter happens while he is out in the desert. It ends before Warrick calls Gil to ask for backup._

_And your reviews rocked. They made me smile stupidly all day. So thank you guys._

5.

Conrad Ecklie took a deep breath and released it slowly. He needed to drink some water. His wife had read in one of her magazines that people got headaches because the arteries in the brain became constricted, and drinking water would help relieve the pain.

Usually Conrad didn't listen to most of what his wife said, but today he was desperate. He had already taking more Advil in the last hour, than the recommended daily dosage, maybe even the recommended weekly dosage, and his headache had only gotten worse.

The Sherriff had a stick up his behind about something or other, swing shift had maxed out their overtime, the Day shift's lab tech was an incompetent idiot, Sara Sidle's body still hadn't been found, his son was failing Geometry, the Lab budget was up for review, and Gil Grissom owed him enough paperwork to fill up an eighteen-wheeler.

Conrad had already started looking around for people to replace Day's idiot with, he had yelled at his son and at the Swing supervisor, and he had called in enough favors to be reasonably certain that his budget wouldn't take any cutbacks. Personally he thought that if someone's budget needed to be slashed, it should be internal affairs. It's not like they did anything but glare importantly at people who were actually doing their jobs. Not that he was suicidal enough to suggest that to the budgeting committee.

There really wasn't anything Conrad could do about the Sheriff, but he could annoy Grissom, until he finally got at least part of his paperwork. At this point Conrad would have gladly taken just a wheelbarrow of completed paperwork from the entomologist, if only so that he get started filing it away.

His headache didn't get any better when he entered Grissom's office. The man kept all sort of dead things in jars, and all sorts of living things in aquariums and cages. The smell wasn't overpowering, but it certainly didn't smell like daisies.

Occasionally, when they got a particularly nasty suspect, Conrad entertained the thought of holding the interrogation in Grissom's office instead of the interrogation room. The Interrogation room was designed to make people nervous, but it showed up on TV, far too often for people to be really thrown by it. However if the suspects were put in Gil's office, there was a very real chance that they would be so freaked out by the dead pigs and living cockroaches that they just might confess to everything right then and there.

Unfortunately, Conrad was fairly that such a course of action was against the Geneva Convention or something like that. And the last thing this Lab needed was to have Amnesty International camped out on their doorstep.

Usually Conrad avoided this place, but today he was desperate enough for that wheelbarrow of paperwork to go inside.

Gil Grissom was sitting at his desk, going over a worn and very familiar file. Sara Sidle's file. Conrad shook his head. He really needed to organize a memorial service for Sidle. The entire Graveyard shift still clung to her memory, to the desperate hope that she was still alive despite all medical evidence to the contrary. It wasn't healthy. A blind couldn't miss the fact that in the last two months everyone on the graveyard shift had lost weight, and become mere wraiths of themselves. It used to be that the Graveyard Shift was the most lively and enthusiastic team in the lab. Now they really lived up to their name. Conrad hoped that a memorial service or a body would help them move on.

"Gil" he snapped, ignoring the file. Grissom didn't want to talk about it, and Conrad didn't know what to say, so they both pretended that it was a recent case that Gil was working on. "I needed those reviews last year. Not to mention the lab expenses, which I needed back in 90's."

"The Lab expenses are done. So are most of the reviews. I also have all of the closed cases filed up to last week. " Grissom said, handing him a large stack of papers. A very large stack of papers. In fact it was so large that Conrad was tempted to buy some Smiley face stickers to give to Grissom. Or maybe some of those large ones that said 'Good Job' on them. Or a couple of gold stars.

He shook his head to dismiss those thoughts, and said instead "I also need an inventory of what your Lab techs want replaced, or added. And I need that before you leave. I have to meet with the budgeting committee in three days."

When Gil gave him a nod, Conrad turned on his heel and headed for the door. He'd drop off the paperwork in his office and then he'd go out to get some fresh air. And maybe a bottle of water. And hopefully his headache would go away.

But just as he was leaving he ran into one of the Grave shift's techs. The DNA girl, Lee. He hadn't really wanted to hire her: she had started babbling during her interview and he hadn't been able to understand half of what she said, but Grissom had insisted. Except now she was babbling again, And Conrad couldn't understand what she was saying, again. His headache got even worse.

"Lee!" he barked, and she became blessedly silent. "Slow down and repeat what you were trying to say slowly. So that normal people can understand you."

Lee took a few deep breaths and tried again, her eyes darting between him and Grissom as if though she wasn't quite sure who to address. "I was processing evidence from the assault case that Catharine and Warrick are working on." Ecklie glared at her. Did she want praise for doing her job? He already paid her didn't he? Lee must have caught his look because she hurriedly continued. "and I was running the vic's DNA against the missing persons database, because the vic is a Jane Doe, and she is in a coma, and can't tell the doctors her name. And I got a hit. "

Ecklie glared harder and wondered if there was a point to this "Shouldn't you be telling this to Willows and Brown? I can't really be expected to be familiar with every little case that you have to deal with, can I?"

He moved to brush past Lee, the bottled water and fresh air were really calling to him now, but the tech surprised him by grabbing his sleeve and dragging him back into the depths of the office.

"No." she said firmly, and if Conrad's head didn't hurt so badly, he would have been impressed with her. "This is something that you and Dr. Grissom need to hear first. Before we tell Catherine and Warrick."

She now had Gil's undivided attention and Conrad's undivided loathing. Couldn't she see he was in pain and the fumes in this office were only making it worse?

"Like I said I got a match to the Jane Doe in the hospital." She took a deep breath. "I thought I had made a mistake. Contaminated the evidence." Another deep breath. This deep breathing thing was really starting to bug him, but she ignored his glare and went on: "so I asked Catherine to get me another sample. And I ran that." More deep breathing. Was he this annoying when he was trying to calm himself? "I checked my results. Three times. And there is no mistake. Because the blood Warrick collected from the car and clothes also matched." Oh no. Not more deep breaths. And Gil, the jerk, was standing there looking all encouraging. Wasn't he supposed to just get the results and go back to his paperwork? "So there is no mistake. Or contamination of evidence. It really is her." Well if his headache didn't kill him, the suspense just might do him in. "The woman lying in the hospital. The Alive woman lying in the hospital…" Why thank you Miss Obvious, it's an assault, not a homicide "… is really Sara Sidle." Was she done? Could he go drink another Advil? Wait… Did she just say Sara Sidle?!?

"Huh?" he managed to get out. Gil looked about as flaggabest as he felt.

"The woman lying in the hospital is Sara Sidle." Lee repeated slowly "Alive." She added just for good measure.

Despite what a lot of people thought, Conrad Ecklie was not a stupid man. In the next few seconds, his mind worked at lightning speed, as he tried to figure out all the implications of the bombshell that Lee had just dropped on him. Sidle was alive. But she had been missing for two months, and now she had numerous injuries. So it was probably a kidnapping. Or she had lost her memory and ended up with an abusive boyfriend. But that only happened on the Soap Operas that his wife liked to watch, and not in real life. So kidnapping was the most likely option. And anybody who dared touch one of his CSIs was a dead man. Only he was allowed to pick on LVPD's CSIs.

He would need to make sure that this was indeed Sidle. And that she was all right. And they needed to keep this quite for now. If too many people found out that Sidle was alive they would sit around on their butts and gossip, and then say that they were celebrating. They were a crime Lab, not a hospital, and they couldn't speed up Sara's recovery, but they could catch the perp that shot her and kidnapped her. Or maybe it was perps. And then they could sit around on their butts and celebrate.

"Lee, who else knows about this?" He had to stop them from wagging their traps. "Willows? Brown? Judy from the secretarial pool?"

The Tech vehemently shook her head. "No one. I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up till I was absolutely sure. And then I figured Dr. Grissom had to be the first to know." Ecklie was impressed. Grissom made the right decision when he insisted that hey hire her. Maybe he should ask Grissom to find a new replacement for the Idiot on Day Shift as well.

Wait. Sidle. He had to focus on Sidle now. He could worry about the Idiot later.

"I want you to keep this quite." Conrad told Lee. "That means you tell no one. If Brown or Willows ask about the results, lie. Got it?" Lee nodded. She looked confused, but that was hardly his problem.

"Gil. You and I are going to the hospital. Gil?" Grissom was sitting at his desk, with a sloppy grin on his face and tears in his eyes. Conrad so did not have time for this. "She may be dying." He told the entomologist. That wiped the smile off his face. It was a cruel thing to say but he needed Gil to keep it together. "Now, we're going to pick up Sara's file, along with the description that we compiled for her Missing Persons report. We are going to go to the hospital check her birthmarks, dental records, and what not. Then we're going to make sure that she is okay. After that we are going to let the Doctors do their jobs, and we will leave the hospital." Grissom started protesting but Conrad cut him off. "We will go back to the lab, and we'll process the evidence, and then we're going find the creeps that did this to her, and we're going to put them away so that they can't hurt her again."

Grissom's eyes cleared, and Conrad could practically see the gears start moving in his head. Gil was the best scientist any Lab could ask for, but when something personal got thrown in, the amazing machine that was Gil Grissom's brain tended to grind to a halt. Right now Conrad needed Grissom's brain working so that they could find Sara's shooter and abductor while the evidence was still fresh.

While Gil was pulling himself together, Conrad turned back to Lee "I want you to put anything connected to the case on the top of your list. If anyone complains, tell them you're backlogged. If Willows and Brown ask, tell them that you haven't gotten to their evidence cause you're backlogged. Everything you find gets reported directly to me or Grissom. And no one is to know that Sidle is alive. Clear?"

Lee nodded and went back to work. By this time Gil had already sprung into action the worn file that he had been brooding over was now in his briefcase, along with the most detailed description that they had managed to compile of Sara Sidle and the new file that Brass had started about a Jane Doe who had been assaulted.

Conrad barely had time to blink before Gil was running towards his car at break neck speed. Conrad followed behind at a more sedate pace. Grissom doing crazy things was normal for this Lab. But Conrad had a reputation to maintain and if he went running around like a lunatic then too many people would talk. He could only hope that Gil didn't drive off without him.

Fortunately his little speech seemed to have gotten Gil to think straight because he was waiting for Conrad near a Jeep. Grissom even handed over the keys to the car without protesting. He knew he was in no condition to drive.

The entomologist did however fidget the entire drive to Mercy Memorial. Conrad was glad that he hadn't brought a weapon, or he would have been tempted to shoot Gil. Instead he told Grissom to open up the file that Brass, Willows, and Brown had started for their assault case, and read it out loud. There wasn't much in the file but what he did hear, made him sick. The case started when a Good Samaritan had found Sara on the highway and taken to the hospital. The Samaritan's story was supported both by witnesses, who swore to his character, and by the evidence which showed no sign that he had ever hurt the woman. In the hospital the doctors at first thought that this was probably a domestic violence case, until they cleaned her up and saw that the wounds and injuries were all very meticulous, non-fatal, and regularly spaced. They said that Sara had been tortured, and had probably been tortured for a long time.

When they got to the parking lot, Grissom flew out of the car before Conrad even had a chance to bring the vehicle to a complete stop.

By the time Ecklie made it into the hospital, Grissom had already managed to locate the doctor who was treating either Sidle, or her identical twin. After all, Conrad wasn't an antiquated judge, he knew DNA didn't lie. But Grissom handed the doctor the file with Sara's description and identifying marks anyway.

Half an hour later, during which Conrad was once again thankful that he had left the gun, and the temptation in his office, the doctor came back. He confirmed that the scars, dental records and birthmarks of Sara Sidle, matched their Jane Doe's to a tee.

Grissom wanted to see her. The doctor wouldn't let them into her room, but he did take them to the glass wall outside of the room.

Conrad had worked in the field for over two decades, and he had seen lots of bad injuries and mutilated corpses. He had seen injuries worse than what Sidle had. Not many. But he had seen them. What made this so terrible, however, was that in this case, he knew what Sara Sidle looked like before, and that made the after a thousand times more difficult to bear. He also understood how Catharine had not recognized her when she processed the victim. Her face was swollen and discolored, and even though he knew this was Sidle, he couldn't see any resemblance to the thin, insomniac, workaholic that he used to see around the Lab.

Conrad suddenly remembered that just last night his wife had been telling him a story she heard about on Oprah, or some other silly woman's show, about two families who each had a daughter involved in the same car crash. At the scene the girls had been misidentified. Then one girl died and the other slipped into a coma. So the parents of the girl that had died, thought their daughter was in a coma, until the girl woke up months later and told them that she wasn't their daughter. Last night Conrad had rolled his eyes at the Soap Opera plot. Today he was facing an eerily similar situation.

"Oh, Sara" came the broken groan from his left. And that caused Conrad to snap out of his thoughts. Because another Wench had been thrown into the machinery of Grissom's Brain, and someone needed to get it moving again.

"Grissom!" he said loudly. The other man didn't even hear him. He needed to try a different tactic. He lowered his voice and kept his tone conversational, "The perp who did this to her is still out there, you know." He knew from the other man's stillness that he was getting to him. Conrad had worked with Gil for over a decade and he knew exactly which buttons needed to be pushed, to get that amazing brain to unfreeze. "The doctors here are some of the best in the country. And Sidle is probably the most stubborn woman on the planet. She is going to wake up from these injuries. Probably not right now but eventually." He kept his tone mild and casual. "But she is going to feel terrible when she comes out of that coma. And the last thing she needs to hear upon waking up from that nightmare is that her nightmare isn't over yet." Gil was definitely listening to him now. The obstruction had been cleared and all Conrad needed to do was give one final kick, to get the gears spinning again. "After all, how will she ever feel safe knowing that the man who shot her, abducted her, and tortured her is still out there?"

There was silence for a few minutes, before Gil slowly spoke up. "We need to find him."

Maybe those Gears needed another kick? "Not sure how that's going to work out Gil. I mean we couldn't even find Sara for two months."

"We have more evidence now. And this evidence is fresh." He thought for a second. "We shouldn't call Catherine right now. She is on a field trip with her daughter. We can call later. Warrick is out working on this case already, and we need to get an update from him. We need to get Brass to the Lab as well. See if he noticed something that he didn't put in the file." Another moment of silence. Then Grissom continued "We need to call Amy have her run the DNA from the blood we found when Sara was shot against the skin Cathrine got from under Sara's nails and run that against McNair's DNA. We also need to get a list of anyone who owns a property within a five mile radius of where she was picked up. It's mostly desert out there, so the list shouldn't be very long. She couldn't have walked very far, with her injuries, and she was probably kept indoors since her skin is pale, and I know that Sara burns easily."

Grissom started walking away, and Conrad brutally shot down his urge to do a happy dance. The corners of his lips may have twitched a little, however. Grissom was really getting started now: from down the hall he could still hear the man talking to himself about patrol cars and dust. Ecklie knew he could relax for now. His job would come later.

Conrad knew that to insure success everyone had to their assigned tasks. The Doctors had to make Sidle better. Sidle had to be stubborn and get better. Gil had to pull together all the evidence and solve the case. And Ecklie had to call in enough favors to make sure that the creep that did this stayed behind bars.

Before he followed his colleague towards the car, Conrad shot one last look at the woman lying in the hospital bed. Maybe he could also interrogate the perp in Grissom's office. That would make the jerk really appreciate the prison cell that he would spend the rest of his natural life in. And screw Amnesty International. No one messed with his people.

And as he walked out of the hospital, Conrad Ecklie realized that his head didn't hurt anymore.

_A.N. If you review I'll give you a gold sticker (in the form of a quicker update). So go! Write something!_


	6. Greg Sanders

_**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Just taking it out for a spin. Will return unharmed. Mostly._

_**A.N.:** Sorry this_ _took so long. My dog ate my story. (actually… my dog chewed through my adapter cable for the laptop. Overnight shipping took four days. And I can't write without my laptop. You know how it is.)_

_But enough with the excuses. I give you chapter 6._

6.

Greg Sanders had spent the day on an emotional roller coaster. Happiness. Excitement. Horror. Guilt. Relief. Fear. Numbness. He was fairly sure that he had never before experienced such a large variety of emotions in such a short time period.

But just because he had full filled his yearly quota of emotions in just twelve hours, didn't mean that he was tired. Griss' determination to catch the one who did this to Sara was contagious. Everyone on the night shift was working with a single mindness that would have made criminals shake in their boots. Except most criminals were too stupid to be afraid of 'scientists'. When Sara got better, Greg was going to make her, and the rest of the team capes with 'LVPD CSI' printed on them. That way even the stupid ones would know who to be afraid of.

In the spirit of Celebration and Determination, Greg had shared his stash of Blue Hawaiian with the entire Lab. Processing Evidence often went smoother when there was good coffee. And there was a lot of evidence to process.

Before he had even found out about Sara being alive, Warrick had found the mother load of all evidence. Not only did he find the place where Sara had been most likely kept for at least the last month, but he had also found three rooms full of dead bodies. Well, to be perfectly fair, Warrick had only found the first room and the day shift guys who had taken over while Warrick went to see Sara in the hospital, had found the other two. But, hey, who's counting?

In total the rooms had contained thirty two bodies. David the coroner's assistant noted that the bodies seemed to be placed in Chronological order. The room farthest away from the stairs had contained what appeared to be thirteen of the most decomposed bodies. The room closest to the stairs contained six of the freshest bodies found on the scene.

Nick and Warrick went back out to the shack. They worked with David to release and move the bodies up to the morgue. Doc Robinson was swamped. Heck they hadn't even got all of the DBs up from the shack yet, but the Doc already had to place body bags into the hallway. So far none of the bodies had any ID on them, so they couldn't even foist the bodies off on the families.

But it did leave them lots of clues about what happened to Sara. Because a man could kidnap one injured woman and not leave a lot of evidence, but the man couldn't kill thirty two people without leaving evidence. All they had to do was piece it together.

So far Greg had discovered that the creep who did this was very disturbed. He actually hung the dead bodies from the ceiling by their wrists.

"Greg" he heard Gil call out to him. "What are you doing?"

"Well the Doc is swamped and so he had some assistant from Swing take the Dental impressions of the DBs that have been brought in so far. Dental Records are usually the most common way of identifying Jane Does." Grissom gave him a glare, and Greg remembered that this was the Great Gil Grissom. He already knew what the most common way of IDing vic's was. Heck, he probably even knew the second and third most common ways as well. "So I'm running all of the dental imprints through the missing person's database. Sometimes families can choose to include the Dental records as a way of identifying their loved ones. It will probably take a while though."

"Can it do that without you sitting there?" Grissom asked pointedly. Greg just nodded. "Well then you may want to join me in Doctor Robinson's office. He apparently finished the autopsies of the first two victims, and might be able to give us a few leads to follow, while you wait for results."

Greg nodded. Gil had been asking him to come along for all sorts of things lately: autopsies, interrogations, even a conference that had been held in Vegas. Apparently it was part of his training.

"Of course, boss." Making sure the program was running smoothly Greg followed Griss out into the hall, and toward the morgue. "So… when's Catherine coming in?" Because there was no force on Earth that would stop Catherine from going after Sara's attacker. The two women hadn't been best friends, but they had gotten along. Well, most of the time. Greg didn't understand why, but Sara's disappearance had hit Catherine even harder than Eddie's death had. Maybe it was a woman thing.

"She isn't." Gil just said briefly "At least not today." Then Grissom caught the look on Greg's face and added "Apparently the field trip bus broke down in the middle of nowhere. By the time they got it fixed, it was already really late, and there were some rules, and some decisions by the school board and in the end the day-long field trip ended up turning into an overnight field trip."

"And you didn't tell Catharine about Sara?" Greg ventured.

"I only talked to her on the phone, and this is the type of things that is best discussed face to face." Grissom confirmed. And wow. Apparently Griss did have some people skills after all.

The rest of the trip was made in relative silence. When they got to the morgue, Greg reminded himself to stay quite and pay attention. Gil didn't always appreciate Greg's witty interruptions.

There were two uncovered corpses lying in the morgue. "These are the most recent of the DBs that were found at the scene. Number one" he pointed to the skeleton with black skin clinging to it "is approximately six months old. Number two" he pointed to the next skeleton that was lying there "is approximately a year old. There isn't much I can tell you about these two corpses, and the rest will probably tell me even less, since they are more decomposed. What I do know is that the killer is almost certainly the same person who tortured Sara. So far there are nineteen DBs that have been brought into the lab. I only took a quick glance at the other seventeen so far, but all of them are women."

"So the killer has Mommy issues." Greg piped in, forgetting his resolve to stay silent.

"And what makes you say that?" Grissom asked him. And he didn't sound too happy.

"Well you know what they say: all psychos have either Mommy or Daddy issues. And since his victims are female, then he probably doesn't have Daddy issues." And that sounded a whole lot smarter in his head. "I'll be quite now."

Grissom gave Doc Robinson a nod to indicate that the older man should continue.

"These two both have broken bones and stab wounds. On a hunch I compared their injuries to Sara's and found that all three of them have three breaks in the left arm, and multiple stab wounds. The stab wounds are all in almost the exact same spots on all three victims. All three also had burned off fingertips. I'm willing to bet that our other thirty victims have similar injuries."

"Any luck getting an ID off of any of them?" Grissom questioned.

"You may have already heard that the victims had no IDs on them, and were all dressed in the same nondescript tunics. Irene send some of the clothes up to trace." Irene was the girl from Swing "I actually did find a surgical pin in victim number two. As soon as enough of the biological material dissolves" the Doc nodded at a bowl with a bubble covered surgical pin, "I'll send it up, so that you can figure out whom it belonged to."

"Thanks doc." Grissom said and started heading towards the door.

"Gil." Robinson called him back. "There is more. From the markings on number one's wrists it looks like she was still alive when she was placed in the chains in which she died. I can't tell you a COD for certain, but it could be either loss of blood or dehydration."

"So he tortures women, then he hangs them up in his basement to die?" Greg asked. "And he was going to do the same to Sara?"

Doc just shrugged, and Greg took that to mean 'most likely'.

He left the morgue quickly and headed back to the lab. Greg had never been this angry in his life. He needed to do something or he would start trying to punch holes in the walls. When they caught the one who did this, Greg was going to use his newly issued gun to put a bullet in his head. No not his head. People died too quickly from head shots. This guy deserved to suffer. And he could probably claim self defense later. He doubted anyone would mind much.

Grissom caught up with him half-way to the lab. To a casual observer he looked as calm as he always did, but Greg could see the small tightening of his jaw muscles, and the lines around his eyes, which clued him in to the fury that Gil was also feeling.

When they got to the lab, Amy, his replacement, came running up to Gil. She had a look on her face that said she found something important. Grissom quickly ushered her into his office, and Greg followed them before Griss had time to shut the door. He knew he probably should get back to the computer, and check on the Dental Records, but he was far too curious about what Amy found to leave now.

"I finished running the blood from the torture chamber that Warrick processed." Amy began without preamble. "Some of the blood was old, but most of the fresh blood was Sara's."

"Most?" Grissom quickly picked up.

"Yes. There were several spots, where the blood belonged not to Sara, but to a man. I ran that sample against the skin found under Sara's fingernails and it was a match. It was also a match to the blood found at the crime scene two months ago." No one asked which Crime Scene she meant. No one needed to. "None of the DNA was McNair's."

"So our perp was injured?" Greg guessed.

"Probably. But even better, I think I know how he was injured." She gave them a huge smile. "Most of the knives that Warrick bagged had only Sara's blood on them. Except for one. This one had Sara's blood underneath, but the top layer had our suspects blood on it. So I checked for epithelials on the handle of the knife, and found that the last person to have handled the knife was Sara."

And Greg felt two more powerful emotions. He felt an insane amount of Pride and Respect for Sara. Apparently Sara gave as good as she got. When she got better, Greg was going to make a full blown, spandex, Super Hero costume with LVPD CSI written across it. Maybe he could even talk Ecklie into letting her wear it to work. Sara in spandex. Should definitely be interesting.

"What about the epithelials on the other knives? Were there DNA that didn't match our suspect?" Grissom asked.

"No. all the other DNA was his. There were also fingerprints on the knives that didn't belong to Sara. Jackie is running them through AFIS now." Amy responded.

So they were most likely dealing with one man. Kind of scary how much damage one person could do. Or maybe their unknown suspect had a partner who wasn't very hands-on.

Greg voiced his last thought and was rewarded with a smile from Grissom. But before he had time to let his success go to his head, Griss looked pointedly in the direction of the computer Greg had been working on. Right. Dental Records. He excused himself quickly and went back to work.

The first victim's teeth imprint had finished running. No matches. Greg started to upload number two's, when he decided to upload number three's instead. Number Two had a surgical pin, and that was more likely to provide an ID.

Once number three was on her way to being IDed, Greg went back to the morgue to pick up two's pin. He got a serial number off of it, and a dozen phone calls and half an hour later he got the name of Victim Number Two. She was Mascha Valentinavna Karatnytzkaya. And she had the pin implanted after a car accident in Florida. The doctors couldn't tell him much more than that. Greg wanted to rush to Grissom, but decided to impress his boss even more: he googled the woman. With a name like that, he didn't get a lot of hits.

So half an hour later (after he got no match for three and started running four's) he was walking into Grissom's office with a name, story, and picture for their second vic.

"And behind door Number Two we have Mascha Karatnytzkaya!" he declared as soon as he had Griss's attention. "She was the year old corpse with the surgical pin." He clarified because Gil looked confused. "And, not only that, but I think I have a theory as to how our guy managed to stay under the radar after killing so many people."

Gil gave him a strained smile but nodded for him to continue. "Okay so our girl Mascha was a thirty eight year old, Russian born, firefighter in Maine. And tell me if this story sounds familiar, because Mascha and her team get called to a fire in a residential area. While Mascha and another fireman are inside the burning house, it collapses. Later the remains of the man are recovered, but Mascha's remains are never found. Investigators into the fire decided it had been an arson case. The arsonist was never found." He then placed the newspaper article on the fire, and Mascha's picture on Grissom's desk. "So if the creep kidnaps people who are presumed dead from various accidents, then it's just another missing body that investigators are looking for. And if he takes people from different places, like Maine and Vegas, than no one ever connects the dots!"

"How long ago did the fire happen?" Grissom questioned.

"Fourteen and a half months ago." Greg answered promptly "So if she's been dead for a year, then the killer probably had her for two and a half months before she died." There was no need to remark on how similar that was to Sara's case. Except Sara was alive in the hospital. And the creep was never coming near her again.

"Good job, Greg" Gil remarked and Greg allowed himself a few seconds to relish the praise before he noticed that Griss was looking intently at the picture of Mascha. He didn't have to wait long for Grissom to voice what was bothering him. "Take a look at the picture and tell me if you see any similarity between her and Sara." Griss told Greg.

Mascha was a big boned, blonde and blue eyed woman who must have made her Viking forefather very proud. There really wasn't anything that she had in common with the slim and dark Sara Sidle except "They're both female. And they're both Caucasian. And they're both in their thirties."

"Exactly." His boss told him. "Most serial killers go after a certain type of people. That type is usually more specific than just female, white, and in their thirties. So he must have some other criteria for choosing his victims. What else do they have in common? Marital Status? Nationality? Hobbies?"

"Mascha was married with two kids. Sara is a single workaholic." Greg answered him. "Their jobs could be grouped together though. I mean Mascha was a firewoman, and Sara is sort of a cop." Then he shook his head. "But who has a beef with both fireman and cops? One or the other sure. But both? I just don't see it."

"I don't know." Grissom told him. "At least not yet" And that sounded like a dismissal so Greg left to check on his dental records search.

The computer was still comparing four's dental imprints with the available ones in the database. So Greg sat down at another computer and pulled up the internet browser. He didn't really think he would find any good results but he needed to do something while the search was running.

So he started browsing the archives of various newspapers, looking for articles about eight months old. He didn't really have much of a pattern to go by, but Mascha had gone missing about two months before she died, and since the doc said that One had been dead for about six months, then Greg figured she probably gone missing around eight or nine months ago. When searching the archives, his main criteria was 'body not found'. After all that was how Mascha's kidnapping had been interpreted by the media.

It was also how Sara's disappearance had been described. He remembered the day that article had come out. The anger on Nick's and Warrick's faces. The denial on Catherine's. And the steely determination on Grissom's. His boss had calmly told them, that despite what some Idiot reporter printed, they would not give up on Sara until they saw the dead body for themselves. Of course Griss hadn't quite used those words, and he had quoted Shakespeare or some other dead guy during his speech, but it was close enough.

Except they had failed Sara. They hadn't found her. She had to rescue herself. But not this time. They were not going to fail her again. They were going to find the jerk who took her from them. And they were going to start by finding the connections between his victims.

And that was why despite the overwhelming amount of information that he found, Greg was still tirelessly wading through it, hours later. He only stopped once to upload five's dental imprints into the computer. Apparently even in one month an awful lot of people go missing presumed dead in this country. Some of their bodies are never found. He ended up with twenty one possible women who could be vic Number One. After a while he went down to see Doc Robinson for more info on vic One.

The woman was white, and in her mid to late twenties. That was all Robinson had been able to tell him, until a reconstruction expert got here. But that did narrow down Greg's search a bit. He now had six women who could possibly be his victim. He then tried to track down more information on the women. He found that the bodies of four of the women had been found at later dates, so he discounted those. That meant that if his logic, and theories were correct, then one of these women was the most recent victim.

The first woman had apparently lost control of her car and gone over a cliff. As far as investigators were able to tell, Animals had dragged her body away from the car. The second woman was a park ranger. The Park Services thought that she had perished when a flash flood had gone through the area she had been working in. The body was believed to have been swept away, towards the Ocean.

It was the second story that made Greg suspicious. A CSI had gone missing from a crime scene. A firewoman had gone missing from a burning house. So maybe a Park Ranger had gone missing during a flash flood?

He called the number of the Police Department in California, which had helped Park Services search for the body of the missing Park Ranger. He identified himself as 'Gregory Sanders of the Las Vegas Crime Lab' and said that his investigation uncovered a Jane Doe which matched the description of Julian Tawny, whose body disappeared eight months ago. He tried to make his voice sound a little deeper and more mature.

Fortunately the woman he talked didn't seem to be familiar with that particular case, because she didn't question how a park ranger who had been apparently swept away in a flash flood ended up in Vegas. She did promise to fax Tawny's dental records to the Las Vegas Crime Lab.

Greg got the fax half-an-hour later. He entered the information into the computer, and ran it against the first Victim's teeth Imprints. He got a match.

Once upon a time, Greg had heard Catharine describing the feeling of making a big breakthrough in an investigation as 'King Kong on Steroids' and at that exact moment Greg knew exactly what she meant. The information that he had wasn't much. Only two victims IDed out of thirty two. But it had been his work. And it was one step closer to finding the man who dared lay a finger on Sara.

Gathering up the print outs he rushed to Gil's office. As he burst through his boss's door, Greg Sanders resolved to make two types of costumes when Sara got better. Spandex Super Hero outfits for the girls, and King Kong outfits for the guys. After all, Greg really didn't want to see his supervisor in Spandex, but a Gorilla outfit might be worth a few laughs. But they would all need capes.

Super CSIs to the rescue.

_A.N. I had trouble with this chapter. I tried to get the plot moving, but at the same time I really wanted to stay true to Greg's character. Should I be worried that I had an easier time writing the killer's POV (coming soon) than I did writing Greg's POV?_

_Review. Please?_


	7. Nick Stokes

**Discliamer**_: Sigh. Not mine._

**A.N:**_ Thank you to everyone who reviewed. Those reviews made me so happy that I kept smiling the entire three hours I was taking my Calc Final. I think I made my professor really nervous._

7.

Nick Stokes shook his head, trying to wake himself up. There was no real reason for him to feel this way. Grissom had made sure that everyone who was working the Sara case would take some time off every few hours. Ecklie ordered some take out, Greg brought out his good coffee, and Sara's doctor had called and said that Sara was now fairly stable, and the doctor was very optimistic about her recovery, even though she still hadn't woken up. The conference room had been turned into a large break room, with food and coffee set up, for anyone who wanted to take a few minutes off.

Someone could have mistaken the conference room for a department party, at least until they heard the conversation, and saw the writing on the large whiteboard. Since not thinking about the case was impossible, people who entered the room would discuss what they had found, or hadn't found in a very relaxed atmosphere.

But Nick still felt exhausted. If he was honest with himself, he could admit that he had felt lethargic for two months now. The moment he had heard those shots fired, a haze seemed to enter his brain. It hadn't left. At times Nick couldn't figure out if it was the world that was moving faster, or his brain was moving slower. And at other times he thought it could be both. He would get up after eight hours of sleep, and he still felt like going back to sleep. The only time in the last two months that he had felt anything other that tired, was almost twenty four hours ago. When Ecklie had pompously informed them Sara was alive Nick had felt energized. And then he saw Sara. In the Hospital. Unrecognizable. And the lethargy came back with a vengeance.

His current activity wasn't really designed to promote an energetic lifestyle either. He was sifting through old online newspaper archives. Right now most people were working on IDing the thirty two dead bodies found beneath the torture chamber that Sara had escaped. Gil had started the chart on the Whiteboard almost twelve hours ago, after Greg had managed to ID the first two victims. Every victim was labeled with a number, and everyone had filled in what ever they knew. Doc Robinson, and David had managed to fill in the age, race, and approximate time of death of the first sixteen victims. They hadn't even gotten to the other sixteen bodies.

Most people had taken a number and tried to track down the Jane Does. For the most part they hadn't had much luck. The best method that they had found of tracking down the women was what Greg used to track down the Forest Ranger. They took the approximate time of death and added two or three months to account for the time that the women seemed to be tortured. After that they had been left sifting through old newspapers and databases for articles about those particular months. It was a painstaking process.

Nick thought back to what Warrick had told him during his last break. The other man had identified Jane Doe number six, as a woman who had gone missing a little over three years ago. She had been the African American elementary school teacher in a bad neighborhood in L.A. And that scared Nick because the profilers could really come up with nothing. Serial killers like the one who killed these woman, usually went after a certain profile. When they had gotten the first two vic's IDed they had assumed that the type was white women in traditionally male dominated fields. The Department Profilers had speculated that perhaps the Killer had had a neglecting or abusive mother who worked in some male dominated field. Or perhaps he had once lost his job as cop/fireman/some-other-male-dominated-profession to a woman. Victim number six had blown that profile to hell. Elementary School teaching was not a male dominated profession by any stretch of the imagination. And they once again knew nothing about the killer.

Well they had a sample of his DNA, his fingerprints, and his MO. But all of that was useless unless they had a suspect. Which they didn't. Because somehow the perp had managed to kill women for years, without ever getting his fingerprints into any database that they had access to.

There was also a need to work as fast as possible because even though the Sherriff and Ecklie were using every political tool in their impressive arsenal, the FBI was now breathing down on their necks, threatening to take the case away from them.

Nick had just started looking over the results from his latest search, when his pager went off. Seeing that the call came from the morgue, Nick hurried down there.

He found Doc Robinson surrounded by a dozen body bags. He was apparently trying to keep as few of the DB in the hallway as he could. When he entered the coroner looked up at him with surprise.

"Nick?" he asked, looking frazzled, "I thought I paged Grissom."

"Want me to go get him?" Nick offered, hoping for a chance to stretch his legs. He really wanted to find Sara's abductor, but he felt that the big break they were looking, wasn't going to come from Jane Doe Number Five.

"It's all right. I'll tell you, so that you can get started working on this vic." He gestured to one of the very decomposed bodies that was lying in his morgue. "Unless you have something else to do?" Nick shook his head in the negative "This is victim number thirty two. As far as I can tell this is one of the oldest corpses recovered. At least fifteen years. This one is also very unique."

Nick waited for the Doc to continue, feeling the hopelessness fade. Unique was good. Unique gave them a better insight into the killer.

"First of all this is a He." Doc Robinson stated. That was unique. So far they had all been women. "Second of all this one didn't die like the rest of the ones that I examined. I couldn't find any sings of torture and he died from a single stab wound which almost certainly hit his heart. See" he pointed to the John Doe's ribs "you can see the spot where the knife entered by these striations here."

Nick nodded. He had been a CSI long enough to know that that would have been a killing blow.

"And third" Doc Robinson continued "the vic had an artificial hip."

That was probably the best news of all. Artificial hips had serial numbers on them that made them easy to trace. So far they had only gotten this lucky with one other victim. The firefighter had a surgical pin.

"I copied the serial number for you." The Doc handed him a notepad with sixteen digits written out on it.

Nick thanked him and practically bolted back to the lab. Tracking down the serial numbers on an artificial hip was not a very fun thing to do most of the time. But it sure beat reading more articles about dead women.

The numbers had been easy to trace. Well easier that identifying victims by their approximate date of death. Victim number thirty two turned out to be a man named Dr. Wilson Woland who got a new hip at Wichita General Hospital sixteen years ago.

A few searches revealed more about the only male victim identified so far. Fortunately there was a lot of information about him. The man disappearance had gained a lot of publicity fifteen and a half years ago. Another unique thing about this one.

He came from old money, and spend most of his life the small town of Teadon, Kansas. The man had apparently been a big supporter of Women's Rights, women's clinics, women's shelters, and things like that. He had been one of the most powerful driving forces behind the anti-stalking laws in Kansas. Then fifteen years ago, the man got into his car and never came back. Nobody could find a trace of him, and now Nick knew why.

What he didn't know was why the man had been killed. The profilers all agreed that their Serial killer had something against women. Could the man hate anyone who supported women's rights as well? Was that why Woland had been killed?

Shacking his head he headed back to the conference room, which currently served as a break room. He needed to update the whiteboard and track down Grissom so that he could give him an update.

Fortunately he saw Grissom and Greg talking over coffee in the conference room. Once he had a cup of Blue Hawaiian, Nick filled them in on the good doctor.

"Dr. Woland could mean either everything of nothing." Gil told them cryptically once Nick was done talking. He then explained "Either Dr. Woland was important enough to our suspect to get him started on his career as a serial killer, or Dr. Woland was either an accident or killed by some one else."

"You're not helping much." Nick told his boss. The rule in the lab was that whoever found the first piece of the puzzle would get to follow up on it. Which meant Nick's job was figuring out how Dr. Woland fit into the grand scheme of things.

"Just follow the money, man." Greg piped in jokingly.

"Nick" Griss turned to Nick suddenly, and predictably ignoring Greg. "You wouldn't happen to know if a Todd Woland had any relation to the Dr. Woland down in the morgue."

"I think Wilson Woland had a son. His name may have been Todd, I'm not sure. Why?"

"I just remembered that one of the first things I did was interview anyone who owned land in the area that shack was found. One of the people I interviewed, was of the opinion that this whole area was cursed, and it started when a nice young man who had a small house not far away from the shack went missing. The man's name was Todd Woland. So you might want to see how the two are connected."

Nick nodded, refilled his coffee cup, said thank you to Gris and good bye to 'Deep Throat' and went back to his workspace. It was only as he read more old articles on Dr. Woland that Greg's suggestion started to make sense. The guy had money, so somebody had to benefit from his death.

It took over hours of searching until Nick figured out how it all fit in. Dr. Wilson Woland did indeed have a son, a Dr. Todd Woland. Dr. Todd had been a young man of twenty six when his father had disappeared. Five years later, the legal time for a missing person to be declared dead, the Todd had inherited a very large sum of money. A few months after that the man had cleaned out his accounts and disappeared without a trace.

Which left Nick with two equally likely choices. One, Todd had killed his dad, gotten the money and used it to disappear so that he could purge the world of evil women or whatever it was that nutcases like their serial killer believed. Or Todd had been innocent in the death of his father, and the Killer, had forced Todd to hand over the money and then killed the young man. And the Wolands' had a lot of money. Nick had seen people killed over fifty bucks. The millions of the two doctors were certainly a temptation. The elder's money made up a large part of the fortune, but Todd himself appeared to have been a hot shot doctor at a very expensive and private hospital known as the Steven Allaysia clinic. Junior certainly had enough to buy him anything he wanted even without his father's help.

Wanting to test theory number two, Nick headed back down to the morgue. He asked the Doc if the older man had found any more male corpses. He got a negative answer, but was told that that didn't mean much. There were too many bodies and not enough coroners, so not all of the bodies had been examined yet. Nick asked Robinson to keep an eye out for Todd, in case he was one of the DBs.

Heading back upstairs, he wasn't sure how he was going to test the first theory, so Nick decided that another cup of coffee might help his brain move. This time Archie and Warrick were sitting in the break room. Nick grabbed the coffee, and some cookies that were laid out on the table and sat down next to them. Deciding that he needed someone to bounce ideas at, Nick filled them in on Drs. Wilson and Todd Woland.

"I'm not sure if Todd could have killed his father for the money." He concluded his story. "I mean junior wasn't exactly poor. Apparently this place, the Steven All-asia or something clinic, pays very well. Very, very, well."

"You mean the Steven Allah-zia clinic?" Archie asked his eyes lighting up.

"Maybe" Nick answered "You know of it?"

"Sure. It's a glorified cosmetic surgery place for the really, really rich. But it's real significance lies in the technology. Even though they don't do things like emergency care, they have some of the most hi-tech equipment in the world. And their security protocol is just drool-worthy."

"Sure." Warrick added in "The stars pay them big money so that the wrong type of people don't see them right after the nose job."

"It's more than that!" Archie protested. "They are the leaders of technological advancement in the private field. I mean did you know that they had the first Fingerprint matching technology in the United States? Back in the day when Fingerprint recognizing Technology was the stuff of James Bond and Sci-Fi, the employees of this clinic used it regularly to check in to work. Not to mention…"

But Nick tuned the rest of what Archie was saying out. A light bulb had lit up in his head, and he suddenly knew the best way to test the first theory.

"Archie. How long have they had the fingerprint matching technology?" Now he just needed to be sure.

"Ummm…. I'm not sure of the exact date…"Archie hedged.

"Was it before '95?" Todd Woland had gone missing in '95.

"Definitely." The tech answered with confidence.

"Would the lab have access to their Database of fingerprints?" Would they match

the fingerprints from the knives?

"No way man. These guys are very gung-ho about their privacy. No one has access to their database."

"Would they have kept the fingerprints from '95, even if the doctor was no longer working there?" Judging from the looks on Archie's and Warrick's faces, they were starting to catch on.

"Most likely. Probably on a back-up disk somewhere." Archie nodded "I don't think they would just give them to you, but you could probably get a warrant for Woland's fingerprints."

"Thanks Archie." Nick needed to get those fingerprints. "Bye 'Rick."

And with that he bolted down the hall. He had seen Brass talking to Grissom earlier. Hopefully the detective was still there. He got lucky again. He caught the older man just as he was leaving the building.

"Jim" Nick called out. Brass heard him and turned to face him.

"Hey Nicky" Brass shot him a grin. "How's it going?"

"Good." Nick had to stop and catch his breath. "Look, I am probably going to need a warrant. It's for Sara's case."

"You have a suspect?" The detective asked him with surprise. Not that Nick blamed him. If the older man had talked to Grissom lately, then he would have heard that their best hope right now was trying to figure out what the victims had in common. And that could take days.

"I don't know yet." Nick told him honestly. "Did Grissom tell you about the male victim?" Brass nodded, and waited for Nick to continue. "Wilson Woland had a son. The son owned property near the shack, and about ten years ago, he went missing after cleaning out his bank account. So he could either be our suspect, a victim, or just eccentric. But he worked at some super fancy clinic, and Archie says that the clinic might still have his fingerprints."

"And you're going to need those fingerprints to compare them against the fingerprints found on the knives?" Brass confirmed "I can get you a warrant within an hour."

"An hour?" Nick questioned. These things usually took a lot longer than that.

"I know a judge who owes me a very big favor." Brass told him with a smile. "For Sara I'm even willing to call it in."

With that Brass left, after telling Nick that he would call the CSI as soon as he had the warrant.

Nick went back to his lab, but couldn't really do much. Every muscle in his body was tense, and every instinct that Nick had was screaming at him that he had just stumbled into a very big break for the case. He was so excited about this possible lead, that he didn't even notice that the lethargy that had hounded him for the past two months was gone.

So Nick spend some time tracking down Grissom. Paging him would have been easier that simply wandering around the lab, but Nick needed to do something physical.

He found Griss fifteen minutes later in the conference room staring intently at the whiteboard. He had a large map spread in front of him, with the last known location of the victims that they had already IDed.

It took a few minutes to fill Griss in on Todd Woland and the fancy Steven Whatever clinic. Then Gil went back to searching for patterns on the map, and Nick went back to pacing.

When the call from Brass finally came, Nick informed him that he was going to the clinic as well. It wasn't like he was getting any work done around the lab anyway.

It took a good half-hour to get to the clinic. Personally Nick thought that it looked more like a resort that a clinic, with it's bright colors and numerous fountains and pools. When they identified themselves as LVPD the man at the guard booth, directed them to the service entrance. Jim joked that they probably didn't want to upset the guests with the sight of Brass's banged up Taurus.

When they got to the Service entrance, a man in a dark suit met them. As soon as they presented the warrant he quickly took them to the security office, where it took a young geeky looking man, less than a minute to find and print out Todd Woland's fingerprints from their database.

After that they were ushered out of the clinic, before either had a chance to even say 'thank you'

Back at the lab, Nick found that the grapevine had apparently been working over time. Everyone had heard about Todd Woland being a possible suspect. As Nick headed towards the print lab, he felt like the Pied Piper. People would come out of their labs and follow behind him towards Jackie's office. He understood their anxiety. This was the first real suspect that they had in Sara's disappearance for over two months.

By the time he actually did reach Jackie, the crowd behind him consisted of nearly everyone who worked in the Lab, including Grissom, Ecklie, Warrick, Greg, Archie, Bobby, and even some people that Nick had never seen before in his life. He wondered if they worked here as well, or if his newly developed powers as the Piper had dragged random people off of the street and into Jackie's office.

He handed the prints to Jackie, and saw that she already had the prints from the knives laid out on her desk. She studied both sets of prints with a magnifying glass.

"They're a match" She said calmly, before she was drowned out by a roar from the crowd in her Lab.

As Nick stood in Print's Lab surrounded by a bunch of people who were shaking his hand, and congratulating him with finding the biggest break in the case so far, he noticed that most of the night shift wore the exact same expression. They were happy sure, but not in the way that day shift was happy. Day and Swing Shift were happy in a 'big break in an important case' kind of way. The night shift however all had slightly feral grins on their faces that should have scared the bejesus out of Todd Woland. Because Nick Stokes knew what those grins meant. They were the 'we are going to catch the creep and make him pay' grins. Nick was wearing one too.

_A.N.: I know that some of you were expecting this chapter to be from the killer's POV. But I read that chapter through and I realized that it was a bit confusing, without this part, So I posted Nick's POV first._

_ALSO: What is the difference between waitresses and Fanfic Authors? Waitresses work for tips and Fanfic Authors work for reviews._

_So please click the button and write something. The livelihood of this author depends on it. ; )_

_(Pretty Please, with a cherry on top?)_


	8. Todd Woland

**Disclaimer**_: After all this time it's still not mine. Sigh._

**A.N**_.: Thank you to everyone who reviewed and stuck with me and reviewed despite the long delays._

_But Chapter eight is finally here now. And I hope the next chapter won't take this long._

8.

Todd Woland rolled his eyes. Dad had just entered the hospital waiting room, and he was already trying to comfort some sobbing woman. The woman was ignoring him. They always did.

That never stopped Dad. He was always trying to support or comfort somebody. That was Dad for you. The knight in shining armor. Galloping to the rescue of women everywhere.

It wasn't always like that. Before IT happened Dad spent a lot of time with Todd. Dad preferred Todd over some stranger with a sob story.

After IT happened, Todd was jealous. No matter what Todd did, Dad always cared about them more than he did about Todd. And Todd did a lot. Valedictorian of his high school graduating class at sixteen. Harvard. Top of his class. John Hopkins Med School. Top of his Class. One of the most coveted jobs at the Steven Allaysia Clinic. And Dad still didn't care.

But she changed all that. Sanna had been a stripper. She was pretty. And she didn't want much. He hadn't cared about her. But Sanna was the one who would reunite him with Dad. Sanna showed Todd how to make Dad pay attention. And for that he was always grateful to Sanna.

He had hit her only once. Todd hadn't even hit her hard. It was her fault anyway. He had had a hard day. And she was too stupid to see that. So he had tried to knock some sense into her.

But she made a phone call. She heard about Dad. What woman hadn't?

On Saturday morning, two hours before Todd was supposed to go to work Dad had arrived in his car. Dad had been mad at Todd. Todd had been mad at Sanna. He hadn't understood then that she was doing him a favor. He had been mad.

He had just wanted her to understand how mad he was. He had grabbed a knife and tried to hit her. But Dad, the knight in shining armor, got in the way. And Sanna seeing all the blood, had screamed and tried to run.

Sanna was stupid. And clumsy. She fell. She fell down the stairs. Todd heard her neck snap halfway down. She lay there dead, at the bottom of the stairs.

Todd head been afraid at first. He had cleaned himself up and gone to work. After work he drove his Dad's car to L.A. and left it unlocked in a bad neighborhood. He took the bus home.

He moved the Shells to old bunker that had been near his house. Todd liked to walk in the desert. That was how he found the place. It had become his Sanctuary.

And then Todd was grateful to Sanna. Sanna was gone but his Dad was not. Dad paid attention to him now. Dad talked to him all the time. And for a long time Todd liked that he could ignore Dad. Dad now knew what it felt like to be ignored. After two years, Todd started to talk to his Dad at home. It was good. They finally got to talk about all the Father-Son things that they never got a chance to talk about after IT happened.

Todd didn't talk to Dad at work. He was trying to teach his Dad a lesson. Dad needed to know what it felt like to be ignored.

Then Dad met a woman. She ran a woman's shelter. She inspired Dad. And the tables were turned. Dad now ignored him.

And Todd pretended to stalk the woman. And Dad paid attention to Todd again. And when Dad lost interest in his only son, Todd took the woman to the place where he kept the Shells. And Dad paid attention to him again.

When Dad's attention started to wander, then Todd would hurt the woman. And when he hurt her like IT happened, Dad paid attention to him longer. After months the woman Died, her injuries were too great. Just like mum, after IT happened.

And Dad didn't ignore Todd for a long time. And when his attention started to wander, Todd took the next woman his Dad preferred over him. And the next too.

Soon Todd had enough money to leave his job. He always wanted to take a road trip with his father. He wanted to go fishing in the Great Lakes. And he wanted to wonder around all the touristy spots in big museums. So he did. And for a few months everything was good.

But then his father got distracted by another woman in D.C.. And Todd was jealous again.

He watched her for weeks. But he couldn't understand why his father would pay attention to this stranger and not to his son. By then Todd knew make his father pay attention him.

He took the woman back to the Sanctuary. He shot her tires out as she was rounding a nasty turn on her way home. He pushed her car over the cliff. He nursed her back to health as they drove to Vegas. And underground he hurt her. Just like mum. And Dad paid attention to him again.

When the woman died, Todd and Dad went back to their road trip. Years passed and Dad became easier and easier to distract. And Todd had to hurt more and more women so that his Dad wouldn't ignore him. The last woman that Dad favored, he had found in Vegas. The Ranger, whom his Dad thought had been so brave, hadn't even been dead for two days, before Dad started ignoring Todd again.

This time the woman Dad had been a CSI, a cop and scientist. And his Dad talked about how important her job was, and about how not a lot of women choose to do it. And Dad ignored Todd.

It had taken several tries before he managed to get the woman alone, so that he could take her to his Sanctuary. And he hurt her just like mum had been hurt. And his Dad paid attention.

But this woman fought back. And Dad admired her even more. And he ignored Todd even more.

But Todd had a plan. When the woman left the hospital he would finish her off. She would die like mum. And because Dad admired her so much, he would pay attention to Todd for a long time. And then they could go back to their road trip.

He came to visit her at the hospital. He said he worked with Sara. A lot of her coworkers came to visit. The nurse said she was improving. Todd made his eyes tear up, and he smiled at the nurse and thanked her profusely. She blushed.

Todd was happy. But then Dad had to ruin it. His Dad started worrying over some sobbing stranger. Todd went back to the car. He could take the woman from the waiting room later.

He waited in the car. He had to figure out if he wanted to finish off the cop first or if he would find out everything about the Sob story. Fathers should pay attention to their sons. Not to some strangers.

He saw his father coming out of the hospital. He was trailing like a lovesick puppy after a woman. Not even the woman he had been comforting. Dad had always been easily distracted.

The woman came closer. And Todd saw why his Dad was distracted by her.

She looked just like mum. Exactly like mum before IT happened.

Todd was not stupid. He knew that IT had driven Dad away from Todd. He also knew that it would take something equally shocking, to get Dad to stop paying attention to the women, and pay attention to only Todd again.

Recreating IT with women, whom his Dad admired, had resulted in some temporary attention. But this woman looked so much like mum. She could be the answer. She could make the difference.

Maybe, just maybe, the CSI didn't matter. Or the sobbing woman in the waiting room. This woman held the answer.

If he killed her, then maybe his father would always pay attention to Todd. And they could finish the road trip, and they could go fishing, and they could do all those things that they didn't do because IT happened.

With her death, maybe just maybe, Todd could cancel IT out.

She got into the passenger seat of the car. Dad followed her. The car pulled out of the hospital parking lot. And Todd followed a safe distance behind.

And as he weaved through Vegas traffic after the Taurus, he felt a swell of happiness. After this was over, Todd Woland and his Dad were going to try taking a road trip again. And this time nobody would interrupt them.

_A.N. I really tried to get the plot moving but at the same time cast some light on Woland's character. I am not sure if I succeeded, or if I just made things more confusing._

_Review, and tell me what you think, okay?_


	9. Catharine Willows

_**A.N.:** I am really sorry that this took so long. As I said in profile the world in general seems to be against this story. But it is finally here and I am almost done with the rest of the story, so I will probably be posting more regularly now._

**Disclaimer:** And it is still not mine. And I am still not making any money off of it. Sigh.

9.

Catherine Willows was numb. She knew that she should be feeling something. Anger. Happiness. Terror. Guilt. But instead she felt nothing.

That wasn't completely true. she did feel a tiny bit of relief. Thirty six hours ago, when she had been processing the Jane Doe at Mercy Memorial, she hadn't know that the woman had been Sara. That should have caused her to feel guilty or upset, but instead it felt like she had narrowly avoided getting into a terrible car crash.

Processing living victims was always hard, but he couldn't imagine what it would be like processing Sara. Processing Sara's still body.

At least she had had the comfort of ignorance.

After Grissom broke the news that the woman from her case was actually her coworker, Brass had driven Catharine to the hospital to see Sara. Brass, and Gil, and everyone else had had over a day to get used to the thought that Sara was still alive. But Catharine had only found out after she came back form chaperoning her daughter's field trip. She still hadn't gotten used to the thought. It felt unreal, like a dream where lots of things happened but you weren't able to feel any strong emotions because in the back of you head you knew it wasn't real.

When Brass had escorted her into the hospital room, past a bunch of uniformed security guards, her first thought had been that Sara had gotten even worse in the day and a half since Catherine had processed her. But once the unexpected rush of emotion settled and the numbness returned she realized that the truth of the matter was simply that now she knew what the battered woman on the bed looked like two months ago.

Jim had left her alone with Sara for a few minutes, and Catherine sat down in the chair near the bed, took one of Sara's hands into hers, and then tried to talk to her. The doctor had sat that sometimes people in Sara's condition responded well to familiar voices. But Catherine hadn't been able to think of anything to say. She and Sara had rarely talked about anything but work. They were not friends. They didn't even like each other.

And yet that was what made Sara's disappearance so hard. Friends would come and go. Catherine had learned that a long time ago. But Sara had been a fixture. They had worked together for years. They had never exactly bonded but being the only two female CSI on the nightshift had created certain closeness. There was an understanding between them. Catherine knew that Sara kept a bottle of lemon juice and a special ordered body wash, both of which were good for getting the smell of a decomp out of you skin. The older woman also knew that she was welcome to use both of these without having to ask Sara about it. Sara on the other hand had 

always known that she was welcome to the special stain remover that Catherine kept in her own locker. Both also knew that if the need arose they could always look through the other's locker for an extra Advil, or tampon. When Sara had gotten food poisoning, but hadn't wanted to alert the whole lab, the younger woman had asked Catharine to cover for her. And Catherine had.

The guys assumed that because they had their lockers open to each other, and because they always seemed to be there for each other, that Sara and Catherine had been friends. But relying on each other and trusting each other was not enough to make two coworkers friends. Friends were required to hang out, to talk about things, to like each other. Sara and Catharine had only been coworkers who had found it mutually beneficial to rely on each other. Sometimes in her most pessimistic moments Catherine thought that she and Sara had a symbiotic relationship. They leeched off each other to insure their own survival.

And for that reason she had never imagined that Sara would ever not be there. The law of 'here today, gone tomorrow' applied to lovers, friends, good things, and people you liked. A cold, biological, mutually beneficial relationship with someone Catharine had not even liked all that much was not supposed to end. She had kind of expected it to last forever.

So when Sara had gone missing, Catherine had been completely thrown off balance. She hadn't realized how much she had relied on Sara for the little things until the younger woman had disappeared.

Sara's disappearance had also forced Catherine to deal with her own mortality. If something that could seem so permanent could disappear without any warning, what else could evaporate in the blink of an eye?

In the last two months, Catherine had become a much darker person then she had been before. Both physically and metaphorically. Her wardrobe had undergone a drastic change. Gone where the bright clothes designed to hide any imperfections, and highlight all strengths. They had been replaced by a dark and much more professional clothes. They had made her look older and more severe, and Catherine liked them because they reflected how she felt on the inside. Instead of coloring her hair with the dark blonde or honey brown color that she usually used to cover the grey roots, Catherine had opted for a much darker shade of brown. It made her look, in Lindsey's words, like 'death warmed over', but Catherine preferred it that way. The blonde seemed a bit too silly, and a bit too light, for the older, wiser, and more death aware Catherine Willows.

She ended up telling Sara about her own case. She retold everything that Gil and Jim had told her before she had come to the hospital. She told the younger woman, everything she could remember about Todd Woland and his victims. She told her who was analyzing what evidence. She even mentioned that they got the new DNA machine that the techs, and Greg, had been drooling over for months. She kept up her monologue for over half an hour.

Catherine had been fairly certain this wasn't the type of talk the doctor had meant when he said "talk to her." But it had felt natural to talk to Sara about work. And as Catherine talked, she realized that numbness had faded. It was now replaced by the much more pleasant feeling of 

calmness. Sara was alive. Friends, Family, good things, and lovers, may come and go. But at least what they shared, remained.

When she ran out of things to talk about Catherine had simply said goodbye, and promised to come by later. She nodded to the police officers who were standing outside of Sara's door, and went to find Brass. It only took a few seconds to locate the detective since he was sitting patiently in the hallway. Together they got in Brass's car and headed towards the Lab.

The night had been very productive if not exactly useful. There had been a ton of evidence to process. And everything they found would solidify the case against Todd Woland. They were however no closer to finding the bastard himself. And everyone knew how important it was to find Dr. Woland quickly. Since the man had been kidnapping women from across the U.S. the case technically was supposed to be handled by the feds. But fortunately Ecklie had some clout with the Sheriff, who had some clout with the mayor, who had some clout with the governor, who was currently giving the feds a very long roundabout.

At noon the next day Gil had finally ordered Catherine to go home and get some rest. Catherine had of course offered a token protest, but Grissom had won that argument pretty quickly.

Catherine walked to her car as quickly as she could. It was unnaturally hot day for this time of the year and with the sun directly overhead, nobody wanted to be out in the sun any longer than absolutely necessary. The parking lot felt the way Catherine always imagined the Sahara would feel. Vast, empty and hot. Every second spend in the scorching sun made it a little harder to breathe. Last night, before she had found out about Sara, she had left the car on the far side of the parking lot. In the early morning when she usually got off work, a long walk too the car was pleasant and refreshing. During the day, especially this day, the walk was pure torture.

She had almost made it to the car when she heard a car pull up behind her. She turned around and saw the driver roll down the window.

"Excuse me, Ma'am." The man in the vehicle said with a thick southern accent "Would you happen to know how I can get to the Desert Casino from here?"

Catherine looked him over as she gave him directions as clearly as she could. The middle aged man was obviously a tourist, even though his button down shirt and aviator glasses were much nicer than the wardrobe of the average Vegas visitor. In fact apart from his accent, and obvious unfamiliarity with the city, the only thing that really gave him away as a tourist was the brand new 'VEGA' baseball cap.

"…so, left on Toulane, and right on Major, and then head straight until the third…" he tried to repeat back to her the directions she had just given him.

"No." Catharine interrupted him. "It's right on Tulane and left on Major"

The man gently hit his head on the edge of the steering wheel. "I'm sorry. I'm terrible at following directions." He gave her a rather rueful grin. "My Ma used to say that if someone gave me directions on how to get out of a wet paper bag, I'd get mange to get it wrong." He shook his head, and Catherine found herself smiling at how much he resembled a lost little boy.

"I can draw you a map, if you want?" She offered.

"That would be wonderful. Picture directions are easier to understand." He nodded at her with a mock seriousness. Then he looked thoughtful for a second, reached over to the glove compartment he pulled out a small map of Vegas, and a pen, and opened the door to get out of the car. "Maybe you could mark the way on this?" He asked offering her the map and marker.

Catherine agreed and spread the map on the roof of his car. The air conditioned air from inside the car was flowing through the open door and felt wonderful on her skin.

"Okay this is where we are right now" She marked a spot on the map. "And this is Desert Casino. You would need to go up this street until…" She didn't get farther than that because the tourist suddenly spun her around and she felt something being sprayed in her face. It occurred to her that she should hold her breath, but apparently she was too late because the world started spinning alarmingly and she felt her body go limp. The man caught her and pushed her into the car. The last cohesive thought that Catherine had as the world started blacking out, was that even though the Aviator glasses and baseball Cap hid most of the man's face, his chin and mouth were very similar to the chin and mouth that Catherine had seen on the photos that Nick had found of Dr. Todd Woland.

_A.N.: Da-da-dun. I seem to have it in for the women of CSI._

_Seriously though, please don't kill me. I really couldn't write any more from Catharine's point of view. Review and I will post the next chapter sooner._


	10. Jim Brass

_**A.N**. Yes. I know that the last time I promised to post regularly I lied. But, writing-wise I had a terrible couple of months: every time I had some time to write, I would suddenly develop Writers block. And when I didn't have Writer's block I had barely enough time to sleep or eat much less write. But this time when I promise to post regularly I really mean it. I have finished writing this story, and all I need to do is finish editing the last couple of chapters._

_**Disclaimer:** I still don't own CSI. You can tell because you have to read it on , instead of watching it on your television._

10.

Jim Brass felt refreshed. He had only gotten six hours of sleep today, but that sleep had done wonders for him. The search for Sara's abductor had been the only thing that most people in the department had been working on. Everything else had been put on hold, or at least taken second priority to finding Todd Woland. Almost everyone's work schedule had been screwed up. The suits upstairs hadn't even dared to complain about the overtime.

It did however mean that almost everyone was sleep deprived. The department heads had taken to sending people home, and ordering them to get some sleep. He himself had been sent home by the Sheriff with orders to stay away for at least eight hours. Jim had managed to stay away for almost seven hours before the temptation to get back to the search for Sara's kidnapper became to much.

The Lab, Jim saw, was even busier than usual. Of course they were under extreme pressure to find the nutcase, and find him now. The feds probably didn't appreciate being sent on a very long roundabout. Jim himself wanted to talk to Grissom, to see if the scientist had any new leads. They had staked out the area where Woland used to live and had put guards around the shed where Woland tortured, killed, and hid the women. Some geek in the lad had messed around with the photo they had of Todd Woland, before he quit his job and went on his murderous campaign. They now had some photos of what Woland would theoretically look like now. Both the original and the 'aged' photos were being distributed en masse all over Las Vegas, asking anyone who had seen this man to contact the police.

But even though the case against Todd Woland was becoming more solid with each passing hour, they had no leads on Woland's location. So far the only sighting of him had been at the hospital where Sara was lying in a coma, and they had lost him after that. The security around Sara's room had quadrupled, but he hadn't come back. And everyone was determined that after everything that the CSI had been through, she deserved to wake up to the news that her torturer was safely behind bars.

Grissom wasn't in his office, and Jim began his search for the scientist. About halfway through the lab, the detective ran into Greg. Or rather Greg ran into the detective. Literarily.

"Catherine!" yelled the very pale and very out of breath CSI, waving a file in front of Jim's face.



"You know, as far as cases of mistaken identity go, this one has got to be one of the more bizarre ones." Jim joked "For one thing Catherine has a lot more hair."

"No. No. No." Greg was really agitated. Usually he at least made an effort to smile at Brass's jokes, even if they weren't really good. "I have to find Catherine. I have to find her now."

"Well if I see her I will be sure to tell her that you were looking for her." Jim tried to assure the CSI.

"You don't understand!" The file was opened and now Jim had a newspaper article waved in his face. "See?" Greg was gesturing at the article. "See? This is why I have to find her."

Jim scanned the headline 'Local Doctor's Wife Murdered. Town in Shock.' A picture of a family of three was located below.

"Okay, so why is it so urgent?" The detective had to ask.

"You don't understand!" Greg exclaimed again. Then he grabbed a hold of Jim's sleeve and dragged him into the nearest Lab. The scientist put the file, and the article on one of the empty tables, and then started opening and closing drawers and cabinets apparently looking for something. He found it after a couple of minutes. Jim didn't remember the technical term, but he knew that it was some very fancy, heavy duty, hand held magnifier. Sort of like the stereotypical detective's magnifying glass, except high tech and much more powerful.

"This article talks about Woland's mother." Greg started explaining. "This happened years ago when he was still a child, but apparently she was beaten, and left to die in an alley. Her injuries included several stab wounds, and Mrs. Woland's arm had been broken in three different places."

It was finally starting to make sense to Jim. "And most of Woland's victims had stab wounds and three breaks in their arm. Probably not a coincidence." He finished Greg's idea. "But I still don't see why this is so urgent."

Instead of answering Greg moved the magnifier thinga-mabob over the photograph, and showed Jim the enlarged version of the woman's face.

"Shit." Was the best way Jim could think of summing up the situation.

_**CSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSI**_

Unfortunately it got worse from there. Catherine had been sent home three hours ago, yet her car was still in the parking lot. Archie and the tech-geek squad were reviewing local traffic cams, but that unfortunately was a time consuming task. Frantic phone calls to Willows' cell and 

home phone revealed, that her cell was turned off, and her family thought that she was still at work.

The problem was that Todd Woland's mother could have passed for Catherine's sister. A couple of month's ago, the resemblance would not have been obvious. But after Sara's disappearance, Catherine had changed her hair color. And the new brunette Catherine had more than a passing resemblance to the woman. Silently, Jim vowed to himself that when they got Catherine back, he was going to tease the CSI mercilessly about being the evil twin, since Catherine's look alike had apparently been a goody-goody two shoes, who had married a small-town doctor, and lived the Stepford life.

And they would get her back. They had too much on this Bastard to let him disappear the way he had when he took Sara. Unfortunately as of right now the only real lead they had was the traffic cameras, and there was no grantee that they caught anything important. So Jim was reduced to pacing and growling at passersbys.

After what seemed like a millennia, but was probably less than an hour, he got a call from Gil. The message was brief: "Archie found something. Get over to his lab right now."

Archie's Lab was full of people: all of the Night Shift CSI's, Ecklie, and other people whom Jim didn't realize on sight. Noticeably absent however was Sofia. Jim thought that he had seen her hanging around Archie no too long ago, but he supposed that he could be mistaken. When he got to the Lab, Jim saw that there were some images from the traffic cams loaded up on the big screen and Archie was talking.

"We were very lucky. The new program that the mayor has been pushing thourgh for the last couple of months, the one where more cameras are installed to make the roads safer, really, really, rally saved our butts. Most of these cameras were installed less than a month ago, and they are the new kind too. The kind that's really easy to miss. Woland probably didn't even realize that most of the places he was driving in now had traffic cams." He gestured to the big screen, where Jim could see the road outside of the lab at night. Huh. He hadn't known that there was traffic camera there.

"This was last night." Archie continued his explanation. "As you can see, the camera wasn't designed for monitoring the parked cars, and unfortunately the lab doesn't have cameras in the parking lot. So we can't see Catherine's parking spot. We can however see a little bit of the parking lot across the street, at that office place." He gestured to the then empty parking lot on the edge of the frame. Pressing a button he started the video. "Right here we have Detective Brass' car coming from the hospital with Catherine in the passenger seat." Jim recognized his Taurus. "And this is the interesting part. Following some distance after the Taurus is a dark colored Jeep. At first the only thing that separates it from the rest of the cars is that he is driving much slower, then," Archie fast forwarded a few minutes, "there he is again, driving past the lab" another few minutes on fast forward "and here he is again. Except this time he pulls into the parking lot across the street, and stays there. And yes I did ask Sophia to run the plates, and it came back a rental to Joe Smith. Doesn't really tell us much since the name could very likely be a fake. Would explain why we haven't found him yet. And Sofia did put out an APB on the car." 

Archie then pressed some more buttons and the picture changed. It still showed the road outside of the lab but it was now daytime. "This is noon. As you can see the jeep is still there, now camouflaged by the cars of the office workers. Catherine signed out at twelve-oh-four. Now assuming she takes a few minutes to use the restroom, pick up her stuff, or say goodbye, that would put her in the parking lot somewhere between twelve-ten, and twelve-fifteen. And right on time at twelve-fourteen, the Jeep starts moving, drives across the street and goes into the Lab's parking lot. A couple of minutes later the Jeep leaves the parking lot. Unfortunately the windows are tinted so, I can't really tell who is driving the car or if Catherine is inside, but the timing does seem awfully suspicious, so I followed the Jeep through the traffic cams. Like I already said the new camera were amazing. I managed to follow the Jeep as it drove around town, did a couple of sudden turns, to throw off any one who may be following him, and then drove to a motel." And with this Archie turned back to the assembled group grinning triumphantly.

"Which motel?" Grissom asked immediately.

"Jaydee's Paradise, it's a dump not too far away from the Strip." Came Sofia's voice from behind Jim. "Archie talked to me earlier." She said by way of explanation. "I checked. They do have a Joe Smith who has been staying there for a couple of days, since the night Sara escaped, actually. I have a couple of patrol cars watching the place to make sure he doesn't leave and I have already alerted a SWAT team. They will meet us there."

**_CSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSI_**

After that, Jim felt as if though Archie had stopped fast forwarding his videos and started fast forwarding real life. Before his mind had managed to wrap itself around what was happening he found himself dressed in a bullet proof vest holding a gun, and standing outside of the door, where they believed Todd Woland was holding Catherine. Fortunately years of being a cop left his body able to function even while his mind was still trying to figure out what was going on.

He glanced back at the parking lot where the CSIs were standing. You didn't usually need that many CSIs working on one crime scene, but no one had the heart to tell Sara's and Catherine's teammates that they couldn't come. Then Jim's training overrode his still shocked mind, and he focused his attention on the SWAT team leader who was coordinating this little field trip. Once the man realized that he had everyone's attention, he gave a curt nod. Almost immediately two blurry young men knocked down the door to the room. Two flash-bangs flew into the room next, and after the resulting explosion, the rest of the people, including Jim, rushed in.

With what little light there was, Jim could make out a form on the bed. 'Catherine' his mind supplied. His instincts however were already making him turn away from the bed and towards the bathroom. The door was open through the doorway he could see a dark form. The officers in front of him had their guns pointed at the form, and were telling him to come out slowly with his hands on top of his head. But Jim had been a cop for over twenty years, and he knew that when a suspect was as tense as the man in the bathroom, then he would not go quietly. This much tenseness meant that the suspect had already been gripped by a flight of fight 

response. And since there was no where to run to, that meant that Doctor Todd Woland was going to fight no matter how hopeless his situation.

But Jim was ready for him. With a calm achieved by years of training he raised his gun up, and aimed it at the man's head. So when Woland rushed out of the room swinging something that looked suspiciously like a machete, Detective Jim Brass calmly pulled the trigger.

_A.N. Please Review. I really do take reviews seriously. They help me write, and get my 'creative juices' flowing. And it will only take you a minute or two. So pretty Pleeeeeeeese? With a cherry on top?_


	11. Albert Robinson

_**A.N.** Thank you for those lovely reviews. They really helped revive my CSI muse. I am now completely done with this story, and the next part will be posted sometime soon. I hope this chapter answers some of the questions that weren't answered in the last chapter._

**Disclaimer:** I do not own CSI, or any of the characters, even though I want to. I do however own Todd Woland, even though I don't want to because he is very creepy. Unfortunately, Life just isn't fair like that.

11.

Doctor Albert Robinson had always understood why the people who knew him only by his profession found him creepy. It wasn't anything personal. To the average John or Jane Doe, the idea of cutting up dead people for a living was a little disturbing. And when he told people that yes he actually did enjoy his job, his creepiness factor would grow exponentially.

The majority of people in the US couldn't understand how someone who seemed so normal could be so calm about slicing up corpses. What they didn't understand was that the dead bodies were just that: dead. Albert had always been religious and had the greatest of respect for the miracle that was life. But what he dealt with was what remained after the soul, or the miracle of life had departed. The corpse was inanimate, in the same way that a chair or a lamp was inanimate.

But he did like his job, because what he did was the first step in finding justice for the ones that couldn't find it for themselves. He was the one who would say if the person had been killed or had died of natural causes. His findings would be the ones that would help detectives and CSIs start looking for the killer, and hopefully would help them bring the killer to trial. He wasn't sure if the souls of the dead really cared about such human concepts like justice, but he did know that what he found would in the long run help the friends and family of the victim come to terms with the murder.

Most of the time Albert didn't let himself linger on the opinions of strangers. The people whose opinions mattered could use many words to describe him, but creepy wasn't one of those words. But today was different. Today he was performing an autopsy on Dr. Todd Woloand, and today he knew he was being very creepy.

The man on his autopsy table had kidnapped and tortured Sara Sidle, whom Albert considered a friend. The bastard had also wanted to hurt Catherine, though the police had found him before Catherine had been hurt. He had drugged her, dragged her to his motel room and then had apparently been waiting for a Catharine to wake up so that he could slice her up with a machete that had been found in the room. Before Todd Woland, Albert had never been glad to see someone on his autopsy table.

He had also never imagined that the dead person wasn't really dead. And for the first time in his life Albert found himself wishing that the corpse hadn't been inanimate. Today he was really living up to the scary coroner stereotype. But considering what kind of a monster was lying on his table, Albert didn't let himself be bothered by his newfound creepiness. It would pass soon enough.

But as he continued to cut up the body of the late Woland, Doctor Albert Robinson promised himself to visit Sara and tell her in person that the man who hurt her was without a doubt, definitely and absolutely dead. After all, there was a theory that he himself subscribed to was that coma patients could hear and remember what others were telling them. And after everything that the poor girl had been through, she deserved a bit of good news.

_A.N. I know this chapter is kink of short, but this entire story started out as a character study of Doc. Robinson. I started wondering if he ever actually enjoyed knowing that the people on his table were dead and never coming back. I figured, that yes, but only if the person was really evil. So the story was my attempt to create a situation that would result in such circumstances. So please Review and tell me what you think._

_And yes, there will be one more part, and this time from the POV that everyone has wanted to see since chapter one (_hint, ahem, hint:_ has initials of S.S._ nudge, nudge, wink, wink.) _: )_


	12. Sara Sidle

_**A.N**. See? I can post regularly when I get reviews (usually). But seriously thank you to everyone who took the time to write something._

**Disclaimer:** I do not own CSI or its characters. I do however like to borrow them, and will return unharmed (mostly).

By the time Sara Sidle had finished drying her hair the Burritos in her oven had started to smell heavenly. She didn't turn the lights off as she left the bathroom and headed for the kitchen. A couple of minutes later she was sitting at the table with two of Nick's vegetarian Burritos on a plate in front her. Nick had insisted that they were homemade, but Sara had some niggling doubts. Nick had a lot of great qualities, but an ability to cook wasn't one of them. Personally she thought that he was buying them some place and then transferring them to one of his own aluminum pans, to make it look like they were homemade. But so far she hadn't been able to get him to confess the real origin of the Burritos. She wasn't particularly bothered by it. He couldn't hold out on her for long. Eventually he'd tell her where he was getting his 'homemade' Burritos from.

When she was done with dinner she went back to her bedroom to get dressed. She had already laid out some clothes. But after another inspection, she decided that the outfit was missing some jewelry, so she went back to her closet, to find the gift box with the pendant she felt like wearing. Opening the closet brought a huge smile to her face. There in a spot of honor hung a bright pink Lycra shirt. The shirt was too small on her, and the color was something she wouldn't be caught dead in, but every time she saw it, she was reminded just how much her friends were willing to do for her.

Months ago when she had finally been released from the hospital, the night shift along with Brass, and some of the lab techs had come to pick her up in bright 'superhero' costumes. It was random and somewhat embarrassing to be picked up by a bunch of adults wearing very form fitting garishly colored clothes, and sporting homemade Superhero capes. They had even talked her into putting on the Lycra shirt and a bright pink cape that looked suspiciously like someone's beach towel. Apparently it had all been Greg's idea though nobody could reasonably explain what possessed the rest of them to go along with it. But Sara was very glad that they did. That had been the first time that she had laughed since that day, almost half a year, ago when HE had shot her.

The first few days after she had woken up hadn't been too bad. She had been pumped full of painkillers and everything had been fuzzy. Once the doctors had lowered her dose, reality set in. The two months she had spent locked in the shed had blurred together in her memory, until they were just one terrible nightmare. When she was left alone she treated those two months as just that. A nightmare that hadn't been real. But reality had always intruded. The changes that had happened in the two months she had been gone, the pity in her friends' eyes and her own injuries attested to the fact that her nightmare had been very real. And she didn't handle that very well.

Dr. Johnson later explained that it was normal for people who have been through that much trauma to push away friends and family. But at the time in the hospital she had 

been a real, well witch was probably the best non-curse word she knew to describe herself. Some of the things that she had said then still made her want to die from mortification. She had been horribly insulting, but all of them had understood, and forgiven her almost as soon as the words had left her mouth.

The weeks that she spend at the hospital she had alternated between mind numbing fear that HE would come back from the grave, bouts of self pity, and anger at everyone and everything. Looking back now she barely recognized herself. But Grissom, Nick, Warrick, Catherine, Greg, Brass, and countless others had been absolutely God send. They had taken turns visiting her so that she was rarely left alone, they had not taken offence to the things she said, and they had made her laugh when she had been checking out of the hospital.

That day dressed in 'Superhero' clothes she had felt like her old self again. And more importantly she had felt free of HIS presence. With the 'Superheroes' around HE had no power to harm her. They had made her believe, that one day she really would be completely free of HIS presence.

Now she was preparing for her first day of work in months. Sure she would still be working part time in the lab for the next couple of weeks, but even that would be a very big step towards normality.

Once she found the gift box, Sara got dressed, and then put on the pendant. It was a piece of amber with a bug inside. Grissom had given it to her when she had completed her physical therapy. The bug apparently had some special significance to some Indian tribe, that Gil had somehow thought related to her situation. And even thought she couldn't for the life of her remember the specifics of what he had told her, she felt extremely pleased to know that he cared enough to find such a personal get better gift for her.

Sara stood in front of her mirror to apply her makeup. She still hadn't gained back all of the weight that she had lost during those two months. On the bright side the shirt covered all of her most prominent scars, and her hair had grown back so that she no longer looked like an Auschwitz survivor.

Of course appearances were deceiving. She knew that even though she looked almost normal, she wasn't quite there yet. She still got scared when she was at home alone. She couldn't sleep unless the light was on. She still had biweekly sessions with her shrink, Dr. Johnson. She still had flashbacks that felt like she was trapped in a nightmare that she couldn't wake up from. And she still had a whole pile of pills to drink, to make sure that there were no complications from her injuries or the surgeries that had to be preformed in the hospital.

But once again her friends had really come though for her. Almost all of the time that she wasn't asleep, there was someone there at her apartment with her. Usually they would say that they just happened to be in the neighborhood, and by complete 

coincidence had some of her favorite food in the car. Her co-workers hadn't been very subtle in their attempts to get her to regain the weight she lost. Just last night Nick had spent his night off watching old movies with her at her apartment and not so subtly trying to get her to eat just one more 'homemade' Burrito.

Checking her appearance one last time, Sara decided that she looked okay. Her colleagues had certainly seen her in a worse state. But before she headed out to her car she took one more peek in the closet. She would never wear that horribly tight and atrociously pink shirt, but today Sara Sidle was going to come to work with a smile.

_A.N. Okay I have two things to say. First of all, I know I promised this would be the last chapter, but last week I had a sudden stroke of inspiration, and wrote an epilogue just for fun. It should be up in a few days, so stay tuned._

_Second: please, please, please, keep those great reviews coming. They really make my day._


	13. David Hodges

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Never was. Never will be. All I own is the plot for this story.

David Hodges glanced around to make sure that nobody was looking over at him, and then quickly opened up Google, and typed in 'Tennyson, quote'. This week he had overheard Grissom mentioning something the guy wrote in two different conversations. Ever since then, David had been trying to find some way he could work in a quote from Tennyson into the conversation so that it sounded natural and unrehearsed. That could really impress the boss, and the yearly reviews were coming up.

Of course first he had to find a quote to work into the conversation. And maybe a little background info on the guy couldn't hurt. The name did sound familiar, but David had always had better things to do in High School than pay attention in Lit. Especially since Jamie Agreto, had been in his Lit class for four years, and she had really great legs. Back then he had always timed his entrance into the class, so that he would come in right after she sat down. That way he could find a place to sit, where he had a clear view of her legs and it wouldn't be obvious that he was staring.

"Tennyson? Hodges, I'm impressed. I thought porn was the only thing people looked up these days on their work computers." Came the amused voice of Sara Sidle.

David spun around and saw Sara and Nick Stokes standing in his lab. Once his heart rate was back to normal, he managed to snap at the very amused woman:

"I'll have you know, that was for one of Catherine's cases." Inwardly of course he was cursing himself. Even now, years later Jamie's legs had the power to distract him from anything going on around him. How had he not heard the two of them come in? "Are you here to annoy me, or did you need something?"

"Yeah man," piped in Stokes "The goo, that doc found on our vic. Amy said it wasn't Biological so she sent it over to you."

"I still have a couple of tests to run before I can tell you what it is. But it's over there, if you think you can do my job for me." He waved over at the very crowded counter. "All I can tell you so far is that it has some pretty corrosive elements in it." Neither CSI made a move to go do his job for him, so he continued on. "And while we're on the topic of corrosive, I wanted to ask you, Nick, if you knew just how unhealthy Alejandro's Mystery Salsa is. Do you know what is in there? I once analyzed some of it…" He was then cut off by Sara.

"Alejandro's? Is that the little new place over by the mall? I saw it when I came back to work, but I haven't had a chance to try it."

"You shouldn't." David informed her. "With the amount of spices, sour cream, and cheeses they put on the food, that place is a disaster waiting to happen. I'm also not convinced that all of their vegetables are really as fresh as they claim. And wouldn't it be 

embarrassing if you had to go back to the hospital to get your stomach pumped before you even completed your first case in months?"

Nick was frowning at him. David ignored him. He had always known that the CSIs were way too sensitive. The lightest things got them upset. And someone had to tell Stokes that his favorite place was nothing short of a death trap. Really, he was doing the guy a favor.

"First of all, their food is a little spicy, but it's good and it is fresh." Nick glared at him." Second, how did you know I eat there? I don't think I ever ran into you at Alejandro's."

"And here I thought you were the investigator." David couldn't help retorting. Really how obvious was it? "You only throw away red burrito wrappings and napkins, with 'ALEJANDRO'S' printed on them, every week." He resisted the urge to slap his head and say 'duuuhhhh'

"You do?" Now Sidle was acting weird. She was grinning at Nick, and looked absurdly pleased. "Burritos you say?" this was directed at David.

He nodded in response to her question, and then vowed silently to find out what was making the CSIs act strange. Well stranger than usual. Because Sara had a huge grin on her face, and Nick was blushing.

After a few seconds Sara burst out laughing, turned around and walked out of his lab, with Nick following her closely, seemingly trying to explain something, but they were talking too quietly and too quickly for him to hear. Though he thought he heard Sara say something about 'homemade Burritos'.

David wondered if CSIs everywhere were this odd, or if he just had the bad luck of working in the places where they only hired crazy guys for field work. Then he shook his head and went back to his search on Tennyson. David Hodges had a boss to impress, after all.

**THE END (FINALLY)**

_A.N. I am done! Over 27,000 words. Forty five pages on word. Over six months. And absolutely wonderful reviews._

_I just wanted to thank all of my reviewers, who put up with my writer's block, and computer problems, and various other delays, and inspired me to keep up on writing. I could not have done it without you guys. So give yourselves a round of applause._


End file.
